
















































\ 



Charlie Circus. 








9 




THE INDIAN FEAST DANCE 






MORRISON’S SYSTEM OF NATURAL HISTORY STORIES 




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BY 


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WILLIAM JAMES MORRISON 

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NASHVILLE. TENN’.; DALLAS, TEX.; RICHMOND, VA. 
PUBLISHING HOUSE M. E. CHURCH, SOUTH 
SMITH & LAMAR, AGENTS 














































Copyright, igij 

BY 

Smith & Lamar 



0.v/T> 


NOV 2/1314 


©CI,A387G99 




THIS WORK IS DEDICATED TO MY FRIEND 

DR. J. Y. CRAWFORD 

Who, with his matchless intellect and untiring energg in the ad- 
vocacg of the scientific care and treatment of children’s 
teeth, has therebg saved the little folks of this genera¬ 
tion, as well as the little ones of generations 
to come, untold pain and suffering 






INTRODUCTION. 


One of the vital problems of the day is the 
reading for boys who are not inclined to books, 
and the solution is perplexing. Mrs. H. H. 
Heller, of Omaha, who has had a long experi¬ 
ence in the management of boys, said: ‘We 
need, most of all, books that boys will read who 
will not read books.’’ The truth of this state¬ 
ment made me grasp at every boy’s book that 
floated by, hoping to find a book with a message 
for the boy who is not looking for a message. 
And it was not until Dr. Morrison, of Nash¬ 
ville, told me of the way in which he was telling 
stories to the children that a real hope for a 
book of ideal children’s stories floated my way. 
Dr. Morrison was encouraged to find a publish¬ 
er, and the first set of storybooks brought out 
were known as the ‘Willie Wyld Series.” That 
they were a success was not surprising, for this 
series challenged the attention of parent and 
teacher; for he had told these stories time and 
time again to the children, and he had the gen¬ 
ius to put them in print without loss in the 
telling. A sort of mental goose flesh crept 

( 7 ) 



8 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


over me when 1 received a copy of this book, 
for I was afraid the work would not come up 
to what had gone before. But the exhilaration 
has been most refreshing, for this book has had 
an increased relish literally—an intensified rel¬ 
ish—and will impel boys to read it who are not 
bookish. No other word expresses it—a “rel¬ 
ish” for these real boy-life stories, thrilling 
with experiences, shuddering with adventures, 
laughing at situations, falling in love with com¬ 
rades, and idolizing heroes. Boys—all boys, 
whether young or old—relish the books in 
which Dr. Morrison reveals the wonders of nat¬ 
ural history and tells of the strange customs of 
the people in foreign lands. 


Boston, Mass. 




CONTENTS. 


Page 

First Evening . ii 

Second Evening . 19 

Third Evening . 31 

Fourth Evening . 41 

Fifth Evening . 51 

Sixth Evening . 60 

Seventh Evening . 69 

Eighth Evening . 79 

Ninth Evening . 90 

Tenth Evening . 105 

Eleventh Evening . 114 

Twelfth Evening . 125 


( 9 ) 
























CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


First Evening. 


W HEN I was a little boy with the circus 
I helped old man Charlie feed and 
care for the parrots and monkeys, and 
I cut so many shines with my pets and played 
so many tricks on old man Charlie that the 
show people called me Charlie Circus. 

Two of my uncles who were trappers and 
trainers for a menagerie always took me with 
them when they went to the forest or moun¬ 
tains in search of wild beasts. I enjoyed the 
wild life of a hunter; and as I had to climb 
mountains, take long walks, and live in the 
open air, I grew to be as strong as a man. 
When we went over the country with the show, 
I had to do as much work as any of the men. 
One day my Uncle John told me that he was 

(ii) 
















12 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


going to Brazil; and it is about this trip that I 
am going to tell you children. Uncle John was 
going to that country to trap jaguars, tapirs, 
alligators, monkeys, cowfish, snakes, and other 
animals that he could use in the menagerie. 
Uncle William was going, although he did not 
intend to trap animals. He said that he intend¬ 
ed to hunt diamonds, as in those days Brazil 
was the greatest diamond country in the world. 
Both of my uncles said that I could go along. 

Although I loved my pet animals, it is no fun 
being with a circus; for there is plenty to keep 
a boy busy, and very often I had to work all 
day and all night. Therefore I was so anxious 
to be off on our journey that it seemed to me 
the time would never come for us to start. 
But at last they took me on board a large 
vessel about to sail for Brazil. It was very 
cold. Great blocks of ice floated in the water, 
and from time to time the waves dashed some 
of these against the vessel with an awful crash. 

Uncle John knew Captain Paul, who had 
command of the ship, and I was introduced to 
him and his little daughter, Mary Cecil. She 
had long golden curls, big blue e3^es, and the 
prettiest red lips and white teeth you ever saw. 
She wore a sealskin jacket and carried a seal- 


WE START FOR BRAZIL. 


13 


skin muff in her hand. I thought she was 
beautiful, and as we walked to the other side 
of the ship I told her that her furs were hand¬ 
some and just the thing* for cold weather. 

Mary Cecil thanked me and replied: ‘^My 
father had them made from the skin of a seal 
that he killed up north in a country where the 
ice and snow never melt. The country is so 
far north that the day is six months long, and 
the night lasts six months. Some people think 



THE SHIP AND THE TUGBOAT. 


that Santa Claus lives up in that part of the 
world. I should not be surprised if he did, for 
father told me that he saw a large number of 
reindeer running over the snow and ice the day 
he killed the seal.’^ 

While Mary Cecil was talking a big bell 
tapped, a whistle blew, and the people who 
were not going to Brazil told their friends 
good-by and went back to the shore. The ropes 




































14 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


that held the ship to the land were unfastened, 
and the boat began to move. A little steam¬ 
boat that, to me, did not look larger than a 
barrel was pulling on a rope tied to our ship. 
Mary Cecil told me that it was a tugboat and 
that it would have to pull our ship into deep 
water and away from all the other vessels be¬ 
fore we could run without help. I asked if her 
father was not afraid to take his ship out into 
the ocean where such huge blocks of ice were 
floating. no,’’ she replied; ^^for we can keep 
out of their way during the day, and before 
night we shall be so far south that the warm 
water and sun will have melted them. Why, 
in four or five days the ship will take us to a 
climate where it will be so hot that I shall have 
to pack my furs away in the ice box and put 
summer clothes on. You will have to take off 
that big overcoat, put that fur cap away, and 
go in your shirt sleeves.” 

Our vessel was leaving the land so far behind 
that it was not long before the shore looked 
like a mere line, and then it disappeared. Away 
out on the ocean I could see a lonely ship with 
a tall mast. It was anchored to the bottom of 
the ocean and bobbed up and down on the 
waves, for it could not float away. Mary Cecil 


UNCLE JOHN GETS SEASICK. 


15 


told me that it was a lightship and that a man 
lived on it, and at night he would put a big light 
on the tall mast. Before this ship with the light 
on it had been anchored to the rocks several 
vessels had been wrecked there, and many peo¬ 
ple were drowned. But now the sailors on 
ships like ours can see the light at night and 
keep away from the rocks. It is a very lonely 
life for the men who live on these lightships, 
so lonely that they sometimes go crazy. 

As there was nothing to look at but miles 
and miles of salt water around the ship and the 
blue sky overhead, I wanted to go down into 
the bottom of the vessel to see the engines and 
boilers. Mary Cecil did not wish to see them, 
but told me to go with my Uncle John. We 
went down a long, greasy ladder to a place 
where men were shoveling coal into a fire un¬ 
der large boilers. The heat made the water in 
the boilers into steam. The steam made the 
engines turn the paddle wheels round and 
round, which pushed the ship through the wa¬ 
ter. It was so hot down in the boiler room that 
some of the men were stripped to the waist, and 
others were almost naked. 

When we came up from the bottom of the 
ship and went out on deck. Uncle John was as 


i6 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


white as a sheet. He said: “I feel so sick; I 
shall have to go to bed for a while.’’ 

Mary Cecil then took me into the little glass 
house on the roof of the ship called the pilot 
house. She told me that the man at the big 
wheel used it to steer the ship. He could look 
at the stars by night or the sun by day and tell 
how to take the ship to South America. 

Suddenly I had to ask the little girl to excuse 
me. I ran out of the pilot house to the side of 
the ship and looked over into the water as if I 
were looking for little fish, but I was not. I 
was sick—O, so sick! Mary Cecil laughed at 
me, for she knew that the rocking and plunging 
of the ship had made me seasick. I did not 
think it a bit funny; and, going to my little 
room, I climbed up on a kind of shelf with a 
bed on it called a berth. I was so sick that I 
wished the big engine would break down, for 
I felt that if the ship would stop rocking and 
plunging I would get better. 

I did not know when I went to sleep; but I 
awoke to find that the little room was too hot, 
so I went out on deck and saw that it was near¬ 
ly morning. The stars were shining, and in 
the salt water around the ship the reflection of 
the stars seemed to dance on the waves; but 


THE WOMAN WAS DEAD. 17 

lliey disappeared as the sun rose like a big ball 
of fire. If all the oranges in the world had 
been made into one big orange, it could not 
have looked as large as the sun did on that 
morning. The cool sea air made me feel well 
again, and as I watched the beautiful sunrise 
I forgot that I had been sick. I walked to the 
front of the ship and looked over the bow at the 
white-capped waves that were chasing each 
other, and as the ship plowed through them it 
drove a fine mist high into the air. 

One of the ship’s men, called the lookout, 
stood ready to tell the pilot in the glass house 
when he saw a vessel or any other object out 
on the ocean. Near us, on a blanket, lay a wom¬ 
an and child. I asked the lookout why the 
woman and child were sleeping on the deck in 
the cold morning air. He told me that the 
doctor ordered her out into the fresh air, as 
she had been taken very sick after getting on 
the ship. ‘^She is a Mrs. Flower, and is on her 
way to Para, in Brazil, to meet her husband,” 
he said; ‘Tut I am afraid she will never see 
him.” In a few moments the ship’s doctor 
came out with some medicine, but as soon as he 
looked at the woman he went back and called 
the captain. 

2 


i8 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


Mary Cecil came out with her father, and I 
went with them over to where the woman lay. 
The doctor said: ‘'Captain, the woman is dead. 
The child must be cared for.’’ Mary Cecil 
picked up the child and ran with it to her moth¬ 
er. ‘Tt is very sad, doctor,” said the captain, 
“to see a mother taken from her child. But 
we must make ready for the burial.” 

One seaman was told to bring some sailcloth 
and make a big bag. Another was told to bring 
some heavy weights. When the bag was made 
the weights were put in the bottom of it. The 
bag was then slipped over the dead body, like 
you would put a pillowcase over a pillow, and 
the bag was then sewed up. The weights were 
put into the bag to make it sink to the bottom 
of the ocean. When all was ready, the pas¬ 
sengers gathered around while the captain read 
some prayers, and the seamen let the body slide 
down from the side of the ship to a watery 
grave. 

After breakfast we put aside the sorrow of 
the morning, and I told Mary Cecil about what 
I did in the circus. 

I am afraid that I have now told you children 
more than you can remember until our next 


evening. 



Second Evening. 

Y OU remember Mary Cecil asked me 
about what I did when I was with the 
circus. I told her that circus people 
like to get boys and girls when they are little, 
in order to teach them horseback riding, tight¬ 
rope walking, and trapeze acting. It is easier 
to learn these acts when young. Though it is 
a hard life for children, I was always well 
treated because my uncles were with me, and 
I was lucky enough never to get hurt. 

During the cold winter weather we put all 
our animals into big houses or tents, and we 
teach them new tricks while we wait for the 
springtime to come. I had to train some of my 
dogs how to play policeman and take other dogs 
to jail. I taught some to run with the little fire 
engine and ladder trucks to a playhouse on fire 
and put out the fire. Others were trained to 
ride ponies and run races. The big dogs were 
taught to play that they were horses, and were 

(19) 





















20 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


ridden by little pet monkeys. I loved them all 
very much, and had to kiss some of the little 
ones good-by when I left to go to the ship. It 
takes a long time to teach dogs some tricks; but 
you are not in danger of being killed, as is the 
case when training wild animals. 

I remember one day, when I was feeding my 
monkeys, I heard the big African lion give such 



THE MAD LION. 

an awful roar that the monkeys trembled with 
fear. I looked at the lion’s cage, which was on 
the other side of the tent, and there I saw Uncle 
John standing in one end of the cage holding 
a common, wooden-bottom chair with the legs 
pointed at the lion. The mad beast was at the 
other end of the cage snarling and lashing his 




































































SAVES HIS LIFE WITH A CHAIR. 


21 


tail. My heart seemed to stand still as Uncle 
John walked slowly backward in the direction 
of the door. I knew that if he stopped looking 
the lion straight in the eye or did not keep him 



THE MONKEY GETS MY HAT. 

scared with the chair legs the lion would sprin 
upon him and tear him to pieces. I took a Ion 
breath when I saw Uncle John slip through the 


bio be 






























22 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


door of the cage and shut it behind him. You 
would not think that a big lion would be afraid 
of chair legs, would you ? Well, he is, because 
to him the legs look like the horns of an animal, 
and the lion is afraid they will kill him if he 
should jump on them. 

I was about to tell of a lion that had killed 
his trainer when Mary’s Cecil’s pet monkey 
slipped down a rope that was hanging over my 
head, jerked off my hat, and threw it out into 
the ocean. The monkey then ran to the top of 
the ship’s mast, grinning and chattering as if 
he thought he had done something funny. 

We were watching the hat as it floated on 
the water like a turtle when a number of whales 
came up out of the ocean to get their breath. 
With a blowing noise they sent what looked 
like a stream of water or vapor high into the 
air. It reminded me of the big fountains that 
I had seen in the parks. I asked Mary Cecil 
if she knew how they blew the vapor and water 
so high in the air. ‘Wes,” she replied. “The 
whale must have the same kind of air we 
breathe, and before he can get his breath he 
must blow all the bad air and vapor out of his 
lungs. He does this through his blowhole, as 
his nose is called, and makes the fountains you 


THE PILOT FISH, 


23 


see. Some people say that whales could live 
on land like other animals if they could get 
enough of the kind of food they like and could 
get enough water to drink.’’ 

A shark made a rush at one of the whales 
and bit a mouthful of meat out of his side. 
Then other sharks did the same thing until the 
water was bloody. The whales disappeared, 
and we saw a number of fish with finlike wings 
flly up out of the water and, in a few minutes, 
dart back again. I knew that they were flying 
fish, because I had seen pictures of them. I 
had also read about big fish called porpoises, 
that were now playing around the ship. They 
were cutting all kinds of capers. While I was 
laughing at the way the porpoises jumped up 
into the air and slapped each other with their 
fin tails Mary Cecil called me. ‘^Do you see 
that little mackerel?” she asked. ‘That is 
called a pilot fish, and it is showing that big 
young shark the way to the ship, that it may 
eat whatever is thrown into the water. When 
the ashes or cinders are thrown into the sea, 
the shark sometimes gets his big mouth full of 
them. He does not like that, and will get the 
little fish to take him somewhere else to hunt 
food. I do not know whether there is any truth 


24 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


in the story or not, but the sailors say that, as 
strange as it seems, this big shark would get 
lost in the waters of the ocean and starve to 
death if the little pilot fish did not lead him from 
place to place to find food/’ 

We were now so far south that Jack Frost 
was no longer in the air. The wind that now 
blew in our faces was as warm and pleasant as 
in springtime. The captain explained that one 
reason why the air was so pleasant was that the 
wind was blowing over a river of warm water 
that flows through the ocean just as rivers do 
on land. ‘This river,” he said, “is called the 
Gulf Stream; and when we come to it the ship 
will be several hours in crossing, for the stream 
of warm water is about sixty miles wide. This 
big river starts on its long journey from a body 
of warm water in the south and flows on and 
on through the ocean to warm the air for cold 
northern countries. I do not understand how 
it is that this warm river flows through the 
water of the ocean. But we do know that if it 
should get mixed in with the ocean and stop 
going north it would be dreadful for the people 
that live up there; for they could not then raise 
enough to eat, because there would be no warm 
winds to drive Jack Frost away.” 


THAT IS A DEVILFISH/’ 


25 


That night as I stood on deck I saw out in 
the ocean not far from the ship a fish as large 
around as a barrel, with eight big arms longer 
than fishing poles. It was shining all over as 
if it had a light on its inside, and its big eyes 
were shining like a cat’s e3"es in the dark. 
When I pointed it out to Mary Cecil she said: 
that is a devilfish. It is sometimes called 



SOME OF THE THINGS WE SAW. 


an octopus or cuttlefish. It has on each one of 
those long arms one hundred and twenty cups, 
or suckers. It is said that sometimes it goes 
out on land to hunt food; and if a man comes 
near enough to it, it will wrap its long arms 




























26 


CHARLIE CIRCUS, 


around him, fasten on its sucker cups, and try 
to drag the man into the ocean. The only way 
to get loose from the fish is for some one to kill 
it and then cut off its long arms. Even after 
the fish is dead the sucker cups will not turn 
loose, and each one has to be prized off. If it 
were daytime and the ship could come near 
enough to scare him, you would see him fill the 
water all around his body with ink from his 
ink bag. He does this to keep any one from 
seeing him or knowing in what direction he 
goes.’’ 

The next day was so warm that I went on 
deck in my shirt sleeves. I found Mary Cecil 
dressed in a white sailor suit and hat. While 
we were enjoying the delightful weather we 
saw some fish larger than any man you have 
ever seen. They had a bonelike sword grow¬ 
ing out of their heads as long as a tall boy. 
Mary Cecil told me that these fish could kill a 
whale or any other big sea animal with their 
swords. Sometimes these fish take a ship to be 
some kind of animal that wants to fight, and 
they will run their swords through its bottom. 
They can cut a small boat all to pieces. The 
captain told us that they were called swordfish 
and that they were good to eat. 


WE SEE THE SHORES OF BRAZIL, 27 

We had by this time gone so far south that 
the weather was like summer time. We would 
stay out on deck all day and until late at night 
while the captain told us stories about the many 
strange things he had seen, and sometimes a 
sailor would tell us stories of the sea. 

I knew from what the sailors said that it 
would not be many days before we reached 
Para, in Brazil. One morning a sailor took a 
bucket with a rope tied to it and dropped it over 
the side of the ship. I looked over to see what 
he was going to do and saw that the water was 
a muddy yellow. When he drew up his bucket 
it was full of fresh, muddy water. I asked him 
why the water out in the ocean was that color 
and not blue and salty. He replied: ^‘We are 
now near the mouth of the Amazon River, 
which runs through Brazil. It is such a big 
river and pours so much water into the ocean 
that it does not have time to mix with the salt 
water until it gets miles and miles from the 
land.’’ 

Leaving the sailor, I went to breakfast and 
told the people at the table that land was in 
sight. It had been such a long time since we 
had seen land that nearly every one ran out on 
deck to see the far-away shores of Brazil. 


28 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


We watched the shore as the ship came 
nearer and nearer to the land, and I told Mary 
Cecil that I was sorry that our journey was 
soon to end. She asked me how long I would 
remain in Para. I told her that my Uncle John 
was going to remain in Para for several months 
and make all his plans to go up the Amazon 
River and enter the great forests to trap ani¬ 
mals, but that I was at once going with my 
Uncle William to search for diamonds. We 
would go a long way up the Amazon and then 
travel to the south of the great river, where he 
expected to find diamond fields. 

Mary Cecil told me that she would like to go 
up the Amazon, for it is the largest river in 
the world. “Why,’’ she said, “big ships can 
go for miles and miles up the river. Although 
it is only thirty-five miles wide where it empties 
into the ocean, in some places, when the river 
is full of water, it is as wide as the State of 
Tennessee. In other places it is so wide that if 
it had a railroad bridge over it one would be 
all day on the train while crossing.” 

I asked Mary Cecil how the river got the 
name of Amazon. She told me that a long, 
long time before any white man had ever heard 
of South America people believed there was a 


WHERE THE AMAZONS LIVED. 


29 


country where, if any fighting was to be done, 
the women and girls painted their faces, stuck 
feathers in their hair, got their spears, bows, 
and arrows, and, like soldiers, mounted their 
horses and went to war. These women soldiers 
and fighters were called ‘‘Amazons,’’ but no 
one knew the country in which they lived. But 
when the Spanish sailors found this big river 
in South America they sailed up the stream in 
their boats and saw an army of soldiers that 
had their faces painted, feathers on their heads, 
and their hair hanging down their backs. 
These soldiers had on glittering necklaces and 
bracelets, rode ponies and carried bows, arrows, 
and long spears. They were really Indian 
warriors; but the Spanish sailors had never 
seen any people like them, and they were quite 
sure that they had found the country of the 
Amazon women and that the people they saw 
were women soldiers. There were so many of 
these soldiers that the Spanish sailors turned 
and went back to the ocean. When they got 
back home they told their people about the big 
river, and said they had named it the Amazon 
River because it flowed through the country 
where the Amazons lived. 

I thanked Mary Cecil for telling me such an 


30 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


interesting* story about the name of the river. 
Just then her mother called her to come and get 
ready to go ashore, as the ship would soon land. 

Now, children, we shall stop our story until 
our next evening. 



Third Evening. 

L ast evening, children, we had just 
reached the mouth of the Amazon Riv¬ 
er. It was not long before I could see 
the green palm trees and the tall masts of the 
ships at the city of Para, but it was farther 
away than it seemed. To walk from the ocean 
to Para would have taken two or three days, 
for it is seventy miles. 

As we traveled up the river toward the city 
we passed numbers of small boats, some of 
them loaded with oranges and bananas, some 
with fish and big turtles, and on others were 
monkeys and parrots. The monkeys were 
playing with the sails and ropes, just as if they 
were sailors. 

When we reached Para the water was too 
shallow for the ship to get near the land, and 
the captain ordered his men to lower the an¬ 
chor into the water. These big, iron, hook¬ 
like things stuck in the mud at the bottom of 

(31) 















3^ 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


the river and held the ship just as well as if 
the ropes had been tied to a tree. At once lit¬ 
tle boats came from the land to where our ves¬ 
sel was anchored, and the first man to climb 
onto our ship was the father of Baby Flower. 

Men from the boats at once began to unload 
our ship. Some of them were black, some yel¬ 
low, and some nearly white. None wore hats, 
for they carry their burdens on their heads. 
Many of them wore only a pair of old trous¬ 
ers; but they seemed as happy as could be, 
singing or whistling as they worked. I want¬ 
ed to go on land, but I knew my uncles had to 
see to the wagons, cages, traps, and nets, and 
that they did not want me to go alone, as they 
had sewed four one-thousand-dollar bills in a 
belt I wore. The belt was made of oiled silk, 
for they knew that water could not get through 
that kind of cloth to wet the money. They 
told me that in case we got lost from each 
other, as travelers sometimes do, I could take 
this money to a bank and get a bushel of nickels 
for each of the one-thousand-dollar bills. 

Nearly every one had gone on land when 
Mary Cecil and her father came by me on their 
way to one of the little boats, and she invited 
me to go uptown with them. If I did not go at 


IVHERE IT RAINS EVERY DAY. 


33 


once, I should have to go in the rain, for at 
Para it just pours down nearly every after¬ 
noon the year round. So I ran and asked 
Uncle John if I might go with them. ‘‘Yes,’’ 
he answered; “but you.must be back in three 



AMONG STRANGE PEOPLE. 


hours, for your Uncle Will is going up the 
Amazon River on a boat that leaves this after¬ 
noon.” 

Pleased with the chance to go ashore, I 
joined Mary Cecil and her father. At the 

3 



















34 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


place where we were to land some negro men 
had tin masks, or scare faces, locked on their 
heads; and as I had never seen such a strange 
sight before, I asked Mary Cecil why the men 
were wearing such things over their faces. 
Her reply was: ‘Why, those negroes belong to 
white people. They are in the habit of stealing 
away from home and getting drunk. To keep 
them from drinking and eating, the owners lock 
those masks over their faces; and as they can¬ 
not get them off, they must go home when they 
get hungry or thirsty.” 

In a few minutes we were ashore, and as I 
was walking from the river I saw piles of balls 
about the size of a man’s head. The captain 
told me that these balls were made from the 
sap of the India rubber tree and that his ship 
would carry back home this rubber and all the 
bags of coffee, together with the Brazil nuts, 
that were at the landing. 

On the way uptown we saw negro women 
carrying baskets of fruit on their heads; oth¬ 
ers were sitting on the ground selling, for a 
penny, as many oranges and bananas as one 
could eat. But the funniest thing to me was 
to see the naked little white, black, and Indian 
children playing in the street and around the 


THE COWS DELIVER THE MILK. 


35 


big turtles that lay on their backs, kicking their 
feet in the air. Many of these turtles were so 
large that their shells would have been big 
enough to make doors for some of the huts 
we afterwards saw. They were brought up 
from the boats by the men who had caught 
them and put on their backs so that they 
could not get away. It took two men to carry 
one of these turtles to an eating house, where 
Captain Paul told me soup would be made of 
the entrails and sausage of the stomach. The 
breast would be cut into steaks, and all that 
was left would be roasted over a fire in the 
shell which covered its back. 

In this city, on the roofs of the houses and 
walking about on the streets, is a bird called 
the vulture, which is about the size of our tur¬ 
key buzzard. It has a bald head, a red neck, 
and black feathers, and it goes about eating the 
scraps of meat and other things that are 
thrown out of the butcher shops and stores. 
As these birds act as street cleaners, no one is 
allowed to kill or annoy them. 

Men were delivering milk by driving cows 
from house to house and milking into buckets 
that were brought out to them. Mary Cecil 
saw that I was looking at this strange way of 


3^ 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


selling milk and said: “The people do not have 
milk wagons or grocerymen to deliver milk in 
this country, because it is so hot that it would 
sour before they could get very far with it/’ 
I replied that to make the cows deliver the milk 
was the best way, as then one could get fresh 
milk and all milk and no water. “You are 
mistaken about getting all milk and no water,” 
she said; “for some of these milkmen are such 
rascals that they have rubber bags filled with 
water under their shirts with little tubes run¬ 
ning down their sleeves, and as they milk the 
cows they press their arms on the bags and 
squirt water into the bucket.” 

On our way through the town to the parks 
I noticed that some of the houses were red, 
some green, some yellow, and others blue. The 
parks were beautified with tall, graceful palm 
trees and beds of flowers that bloom all the 
year. /If these flowers were brought to our 
country, old Jack Frost would get them; but 
he cannot go to Para, because the sun shines 
too hot there summer and winter. 

Before I had a chance to see all the strange 
and wonderful things about the town it was 
time for me to go back to the ship. I found 
that Uncle Will was ready to go on the boat 


/ WAS HOMESICK. 


2>7 


that was to start up the Amazon. I thanked 
Captain and Mrs. Paul for their kindness to 
me, gave Uncle John the belt that had the mon¬ 
ey sewed in. it and told him good-by, and, with 
Mary Cecil, walked over to the steamboat. On 
the way I told her how sorry I was to leave my 
friends and that if I ever got back alive I 
would go to see her. As she returned to her 
father’s ship I watched her until she was out 
of sight, then, somehow, I began to feel lone¬ 
some and homesick. 

In a few moments the pilot of our boat went 
into the pilot house and took hold of the big 
wheel, the captain rang the bell, the big paddle 
wheels on each side of the boat began to splash 
and churn the water, and our boat started on 
her long journey up the Amazon River. Uncle 
Will must have known that I was homesick, 
for he came out on deck and sat down by me. 
He asked a gentleman what the men in the 
boats were doing skimming over the top of the 
water with their nets. The man shook his 
head, for he could not understand English. 

Now, when I was with the show I met China¬ 
men from China, Frenchmen from France, 
Spaniards from Spain, and Portuguese from 
Portugal. From them I had learned to speak 




CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


their several languages fairly well. Nearly 
all the people in Brazil speak Portuguese; and 
as I could speak and understand their lan¬ 
guage, I had to do the talking. So the man 
told me that the men in the boats were catching 
bugs and flies in the nets. These bugs and flies 
are packed in barrels and shipped to London, 
Paris, and other large cities for bird food. 
The air just above the water is so full of bugs 
that it does not take long to catch a barrel of 
them. 

For a few minutes, just as the sun went 
down, the river looked as if it had been 
changed into water of gold; but as soon as the 
sun set it was night, and dark night, and the 
river looked like a stream of ink running 
through the forest. When the big full moon 
came up over the inklike river, it made a silver 
path to the boat. Over and along this path 
fireflies, or lightning bugs, as large as small 
humming birds could be seen giving out first a 
red light, then a green one. I thought this 
would be a delightful road for a fairy queen 
to travel in her carriage of pearl from this 
world to the moon, for no path could be more 
charming than this silver road with these 
strange living lamps of red and green flying in 


ON THE EQUATOR. 


39 


every direction to light up and make beautiful 
the way. But as I was now getting sleepy, I 
had to leave this beautiful scene to the fairies. 

When I awoke early the next morning the 
sun was shining almost as bright as at midday. 
I had always been accustomed, just before 
sunrise, to see the skies in the east a steel gray; 
then, one by one, the stars went out while the 
banks of clouds took on a silver lining to be 
quickly changed to orange gold, streaked here 
and there with silver ribbons. The next mon 
ment the great red ball of sun fire would seem 
to come up from behind the hills or trees, and 
not until then was it bright daylight. 

But on the equator, which is halfway be¬ 
tween the top and bottom of the world, the 
mornings have no dawn, and none of these 
beautiful changes take place in the heavens at 
sunrise as they do in this country. On the 
other hand, the people who live on the Amazon 
River have more beautiful flowers, trees, and 
vines than any people in the world. 

On one side of the boat I could see nothing 
but water; on the other, nothing but forests. 
The trees were large, close to each other, and 
so covered with vines that one would wonder 
how a bird could fly through them. With their 


40 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


heads above the surrounding jungle, giant 
flower-topped trees stood in all their beauty 
and grandeur. The flowers on some of these 
trees were a violet blue, some white, and some 
yellow; and if you had seen them as I did, wet 
with dewdrops sparkling in the sunlight, you 



might have thought that some giant queen had 
left her bouquet on the green carpet of the 
jungle to be kissed by the first rays of the 
morning sun. 

Next evening I shall tell you more about my 
trip on the boat and the awful thing that hap¬ 
pened. 







Fourth Evening. 


N OW, children, after several days’ travel 
we came to a place where the river 
began to get narrow, and I became 
frightened at a strange roaring noise that at 
each repetition got louder and more dreadful. I 
saw that the roar was made by an ocean of wa¬ 
ter twelve or fifteen feet high that came rushing 
up the river. With an awful noise it burst 
upon an island far down the river and washed 
it away as though it had been made of sand. 
The island with all its big trees was gone; but 
I believe it saved our boat from destruction, 
for I am sure that if that awful Amazon tidal 
wave had struck us with full force it would 
have destroyed our boat as it did the island. 

Although the steamer was not damaged, I 
knew from the way great clouds of smoke were 
coming out of the boat’s smokestacks that the 
fireman was having trouble in keeping up 
enough steam to push us through the narrow 

(41) 










42 


CHARLIE CIRCUS, 


place in the river; for here the water was rush¬ 
ing against the boat with such force that we 
did not make much headway against the stream. 

After supper, as Uncle Will and I sat on the 
deck, the fire and smoke from the smokestacks 
rose in the air like great balloons. The steam 
was screaming and hissing from the safety 
valves on the great boilers. The escape pipes 
on the back of the boat were coughing hard and 
sending out clouds of white steam at each 
“chug’’ of the engines, and as the paddle wheels 
battled with and churned the rushing water the 
boat trembled and quivered as though it would 
go to pieces. I was so scared that I wished I 
were anywhere else than on that boat. And a 
wish was never more quickly granted, for there 
was a flash of light with a terrible noise, and 
I was thrown high in the air. When I came 
down, under the water I went, but soon bobbed 
up again. The boat’s boilers had burst and 
blown the boat into pieces. I heard men and 
women screaming and children crying as I 
tried to swim and prayed to God to spare our 
lives. The rushing water and my wet clothes 
were too much for me, and I felt myself sink¬ 
ing. Everything that I had ever done in my 
whole life, good or bad, was now flying through 


IT WAS A LOG. 


43 


my mind like moving pictures passing before 
my eyes. Then something bumped against me. 
I grabbed the object and held on with a grip 
that nothing could have loosened. I found that 
it was a large log; and after much hard work 



/ was throzvn high in the air. 


I got on it and, catching a piece of plank that 
floated near me, I used it as a paddle to get to 
land. 

When at last I reached the shore, it seemed 
to me that big snakes were hanging from the 





















44 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


limbs of the trees, but I thought I had rather 
take my chances with them than with the big 
river that had so nearly drowned me. Mon¬ 
keys were chattering, bullfrogs were bellowing, 
owls were hooting, and as soon as I put my 
feet on land and started to climb the bank all 
kinds of parrots began to make a fuss. I was 
not afraid of anything except the big snakes, 
for I never did like snakes. The bank of the 
river was very steep; and the mud made it very 
slippery, and I had to catch hold of bushes 
in order to climb up. This shook them, and 
thousands of fireflies, or lightning bugs, flew 
up into the air. They made the forest around 
me so light that I could see that what I thought 
were snakes and what had nearly scared me to 
death were nothing but vines hanging from the 
limbs of the trees. 

When I at last got up to a place where the 
ground was level and I was no longer afraid 
that I might slip and fall back into the river, I 
stopped to rest a while. I was tired and sleepy. 
But I knew that the woods were full of jaguars 
and all kinds of animals; and if I should go to 
sleep, they might tear me to pieces. So I 
walked on as best I could through the jungle 
of vines, trees, and bushes, never getting out 


/ STEPPED ON A BIG SNAKE, 


45 


of sight of the river. Sometimes I would have 
to get down on my knees and crawl under the 
network of vines. At other places I had to 
climb over the trunks of big trees that had been 
blown down. As I slipped down from one of 
these trees I felt something as soft as a cushion 
under my feet, and I had no sooner touched it 
than it began to move. I knew I had stepped 
on a big snake, and I ran away as fast as I 
could. 

Turning to see if the snake was chasing 
me, I saw some kind of an animal following 
that in the moonlight looked like a great big 
cat. The faster I ran, the faster it ran and 
the closer it came to me. When I stopped, it 
stopped and lashed its long tail. I knew that if 
I could get a fire started I could scare the animal 
away. Getting out my match box, which was 
made so that water could not get in it, I tried 
one of the matches, and it flashed up with a 
bright light. I then gathered a handful of dry 
leaves and set them on fire. I piled leaves and 
brush around this little fire until it blazed up 
as high as my head. The ground was covered 
with dead leaves, because in Brazil the trees are 
dropping their old leaves and growing new 
ones all the year round; so you can understand 


46 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


that while the trees are always green the 
ground always has some dead leaves on it. 
The wind blew the fire among these dead leaves 
near where the catlike animal stood, and away 
he ran toward the river. I heard him jump, 
and the water rippled in the moonlight as the 
animal swam for an island out in the river. 

I was very tired; and knowing that the fire 
would frighten away the wild animals, I sat 
down to rest. I did not intend to go to sleep, 
but I did. I was awakened by the bark of a 
dog close to me. I could see the animal stand¬ 
ing a few feet away, and he was barking at me 
as if he had treed a coon. I was afraid that my 
pistol would miss fire after the wetting it got, 
and I reached for a stick that lay close to me. 
As I did this the dog turned and ran toward 
the river. I jumped up and ran after him, 
hoping he would lead me to some house where 
I could find help. I had not run far when 
through the bushes I caught sight of a flicker¬ 
ing firelight. I felt sure now that I would find 
somebody close by. Being in a strange, wild 
country and not knowing the kind of people I 
should meet, I carefully and silently moved to¬ 
ward the firelight. 

I soon saw the figure of a man, and then I 


LOOKED LIKE OLD NICK. 


47 


watched to see if there was more than one per¬ 
son. Crawling close up to the light, I could 
see that the fire was on the bank of the river 
and that the man was a huge negro busy broil¬ 
ing fish upon the live coals. He was as black 
as soot, and had neither hat, shirt, nor shoes 
on—in fact, he was almost naked. He now 

began to pile more wood on the fire, and as he 

% 

walked about the flaring flames he reminded 
me of Old Nick. 

I could see a rifle leaning against a tree 
close by him and a boat rocking on the waters 
of the river. The dog I had followed was also 
close by and had scented me, for he gave a 
growl. With this the black man stood still to 
listen with his face toward the river. I saw 
that this was my only chance; and, rushing 
from my hiding place, I leveled my pistol at 
him, at the same time telling him that if he did 
not move I would not hurt him. 

The negro was too scared to run, but the dog 
ran off some distance and began barking. I 
got between the black man and his rifle, at the 
same time ordering him to sit down; for I 
knew that if he got a chance he would run, and 
I had made up my mind to tell him about the 
steamboat wreck and find out from him all I 


48 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


could about the country we were in. He soon 
understood that I did not intend to harm him, 
and I learned that his name was Samson. He 
had heard the boat explosion, but thought the 
noise was made by the caving in of the river 
bank. He told me that he had come there to 
get a fishing camp ready for his master, a Mr. 
Goodman, who lived a little distance back from 
the river on a big plantation. I explained to 
Samson that I wanted to search for my uncle, 
and told him that if he would help me I would 
pay him. 

I must have slept quite a long time in the 
woods before the dog awakened me; for Sam¬ 
son said that it would soon be daylight and we 
would take the boat and begin the search, as 
his master would not come to the camp for 
several days, but that we must have some break¬ 
fast before going. In a few moments the sun 
rose, and the mighty Amazon River stretched 
out before me for miles and miles. Here and 
there in this ocean of water were little green 
islands. 

Samson packed away in the boat enough 
food to last several days. Then, handing me 
the fishing line, his pistol, and a box of pistol 
balls, he unlocked the boat and I got in, taking 


ALLIGATORS AND ALLIGATORS, 


49 


my seat so as to be pilot and guide the boat. 
Samson dipped his paddles into the water and 
gave a pull that made the boat shoot from the 
shore, and we were headed toward one of the 
nearest islands. As we came close to it we 
could see big alligators on the sand and logs 
at the water’s edge. I shot at one of them, but 
his hide was so hard that the bullet glanced 
off and struck the water some distance from 
him. The report of the pistol scared the others, 
and there was a great splashing of water as 
the alligators jumped into the river. There 
seemed to be as many alligators in the water 
as you sometimes see wiggletails in a rain bar¬ 
rel. 

We paddled slowly along close to the shore, 
watching in the mud and sand for footprints. 
Now and then I shot a black duck or a stork 
as he stood on one foot as still as a statue 
watching for a fish to come his way. By doing 
this, I soon had enough meat for our dinner, 
and I knew that if Uncle Will was on the island 
he would hear the shooting and come to us. 

We passed all around the island; and not 
seeing any one on it, we headed our boat for the 
next island, which was much larger than the 
first one. On this island we could see trees as 


4 


50 CHARLIE CIRCUS, 

tall as church steeples making a shade far out 
on the water. 

As we neared the land a drove of big, awk¬ 
ward flamingoes flew over our heads. I shot 
into them, and CMie with brilliant red feathers 
fell near our boat, making a great fuss splashing 
about in the water. At the water’s edge these 
big birds had built the strangest-looking nests 
by scraping together enough earth to form a 

cone-shaped hill twen¬ 
ty inches high. The 
top of the little hill 
was hollowed out for 
the nest, and some of 
these had two and 
some three eggs in 
them about as large as 

a goose egg. The big 
flamingoes' nests. , . , , 

bird sits on her nest 

with her long legs hanging down on each side 

of the hill-like nest. 

At one place on the .shore there were the 
footprints of some man or woman, so we landed 
our boat where they went down to the water. 
And here let us rest until our next evening. 






Fifth Evening, 


I DARESAY you children are as anxious to 
know about the footprints on the island as 
I was. I jumped out of the boat, got down 
on my knees, and took a good look at the tracks. 
I thought they looked a little strange, but I 
was quite sure they were a man’s footprints. 

As soon as Samson tied our boat I called 
him to come and see them. He looked scared as 
he said: ‘^Don’t you see? The toes of these 
tracks point toward the river. There are no 
footprints with the toes pointing toward the 
woods. I have been told that some of these 
islands are the homes of the curapira, whose 
feet grow on their legs just the opposite way 
from ours. So when they walk their tracks 
point toward the place they are leaving instead 
of toward the place to which they are going, 
as ours do. These men have dark, yellow skins, 
heads as bald as an egg, big ears, and green 
teeth. They lead people out into the forest so 

(51) 






















52 CHARLIE CIRCUS, 

they can kill and eat them. People who do not 
know about this strange man are soon caught 
by him, because they are going to him when 
they think they are getting away. As soon as 
he bites them with his green teeth they die.’’ 

I forgot that I was hunting for my uncle, I 


was so eager to catch 
one of these strange wild 
men for our show. But 
Samson refused to go 
with me in search of this 
strange being, so I told 
him to make a fire and 
cook dinner, and that I 
would follow the tracks 
myself. Samson begged 
me not to go, for he was 
sure that I would be 
killed by the wild man of 
the woods. Samson be- 



THE CURAPIRA MUST HAVE 


LOOKED LIKE THIS. 


lieved every word of what he had told me, but 
I would not listen to him and started on the 
trail of the curapira. I could not go very fast, 
as I had to stop once in a while and peep 
through the bushes ahead of me for fear I 
should run upon the wild man or that he would 
see me before I saw him. 















SAMSON RAN AWAY WITH THE BOAT, 53 


The last time I peeped through the bushes I 
saw in front of me a man digging and pulling 
at a root. His back was to me, and he was a 
dark-skinned man, but far from being little. 
He could come nearer catching me than I could 
catching him. As cpiietly as I could I ran 
back to the boat to get Samson to come and 
help me. When I reached our landing place, 
there on the ground were the birds I had killed, 
but Samson and the boat were gone. I looked 
in every direction 
over the water, but 
I could see nothing 
of them. 

It was now long 
after dinner time; 
and, being hungry, I 
gathered some leaves 
and sticks and start¬ 
ed a fire. I knelt 
down to blow it into 
a blaze; and, upon 
looking up, there 
stood a tall Indian 
with a bundle of 
roots on his shoul¬ 
der. He must have 











54 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


seen that I was frightened, for he said: ‘^Boy, 
you must not be afraid of me. I will not hurt 
you. My name is Fleetfoot. I am a good In¬ 
dian, and I came over here to dig up the sar¬ 
saparilla roots that grow in the wet places 
about this island. I can sell them to be shipped 
to other countries, where they are made into 
medicine.’’ 

I asked the Indian if the tracks in the sand 
were his footprints. ^^Yes,” he replied. ^‘My 
brother and I landed on the island at a place 
below here, and I came through the woods 
while he brought the boat around to this point. 
We went down the river a little way to find a 
good place to camp; but not finding a better 
spot than this, I got out down there, walked 
into the woods, and went to work.” 

I told the Indian that Mr. Goodman’s negro 
man, Samson, thought because all the foot¬ 
prints pointed toward the river that they were 
curapira tracks, and that I followed them and 
when I saw him I thought I had found a cura¬ 
pira and came back to get Samson, but found he 
had gone with my boat. !” said the Indian. 
''I know Samson; he is as afraid of a curapira 
as he is of death. He ran away with the boat 
and has left you and the wild man to fight it 


THE WOUNDED MAN. 


55 


out. He may return for you if he does not go 
to the town of the runaway negroes, which 
is back in the forest a few miles from the 
river.’’ 

While the Indian was talking I got the fire 
to burning and was getting ready to cook my 
birds. I began to think that Samson was not 
coming back, and I asked the Indian how he 
expected to get home. He replied: ‘‘This 
morning as my brother and I were passing by 
that little island over there a white man was 
lying on the sand. We went over to see who it 
was and what was the matter with him. We 
could not understand a word he said, and he 
could not understand us, although we spoke to 
him both in Spanish and in Portuguese. We 
found out that his arm was broken and that 
he was very hungry and thirsty, so I gave him 
some food and water. Then he made us pull 
on the broken arm until he could feel that the 
ends of the broken bone were together. My 
brother cut some bamboo sticks while I got 
some vines for strings. The bamboo canes we 
put on his arm for braces and bound them on 
with the vines. In this way the broken bone 
was kept in place. We put the man in our 
boat and came to this island, where I got out. 


56 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


Although it is quite a long journey, my brother 
started with the poor man to our village/’ 

I asked the Indian about the man’s clothes, 
the color of his eyes and hair, and about a ring 
on his finger. His answers made me think that 
this man was my uncle, and I was anxious to 
go home with him to see. 

The hours passed by, but Samson did not 
return. The Indian got out his hook and line 
and began to fish. I sat down by him and 
asked him to tell me about the curapira and 
whether he thought he could catch one or two, 
as I wanted them for a show. 

*‘l have never seen one of these wild men,” 
said the Indian, “although there must be a 
great many of them living in the hollow trees 
out in the forest. Nearly every negro and 
Indian you meet claims to have seen some of 
them or has heard them thumping on the trees 
just before a storm to find out if the trees were 
strong enough not to be blown down by the 
wind, for the curapiras are supposed to take 
care of the forests. I have heard them say 
that some of these wild men were covered with 
long, shaggy hair, and had forked feet and 
bright red faces. 

“I have often heard the story of a man who. 


STORY ABOUT THE CURAPIRA. 


57 


to save time, made a short cut through a part 
of the woods where a curapira lived. The man 
had just killed a monkey and, being tired, sat 
down under a large tree to rest. The curapira 
crept up on the other side of the tree, reached 
around and caught the man by the hair, and 
asked him why he had come by his home in the 
hollow tree. Although the man was scared, he 
replied, ‘Because it was a shorter way home 
and I saw some game that I wanted to kill.’ 
‘Then,’ said the curapira, ‘give me one of your 
eyes to eat.’ The man punched out one of the 
monkey’s eyes and handed it to the curapira. 
‘That is good,’ he said. Can you see?’ ‘Yes,’ 
replied the man. ‘Then give me your other 
eye,’ demanded the wild man. The hunter gave 
him the monkey’s other eye. The curapira 
asked, ‘Can you see now?’ ‘Yes,’ replied the 
hunter, ‘as well as ever.’ ‘Now give me one 
of your eyes,’ said the hunter. The curapira 
pulled out one of his eyes and gave it to him. 
‘Can you see?’ asked the hunter. ‘Yes,’ replied 
the curapira. ‘Then give me your other eye,’ 
said the hunter. The curapira, thinking he 
could see without the other eye, pulled it out. 
The hunter grabbed it and ran, knowing that 
the curapira could not see to catch him. 


58 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


‘‘Some months after this the hunter was go¬ 
ing through this same woods and saw the blind 
curapira stumbling about trying to find some¬ 
thing to eat. The hunter, feeling sorry for 
him, called to the wild man and asked if there 
was anything he could do for him. The cura¬ 
pira replied, ‘Yes; catch me a monkey that I 
may get his eyes to see with.’ The hunter said 
that he would do so if the curapira would 
promise never to hurt him. The curapira made 
all kinds of promises. The hunter set a trap, 
caught a monkey, and brought it to the cura¬ 
pira. As soon as he could punch the monkey’s 
eyes out and put them in the places where his 
had been, he said to the hunter, ‘Your eyes 
shall be able to see birds and other animals 
better than any hunter’s. Your sight shall be 
so good that your arrows will hit the mark 
every time you shoot.’ After that this hunter 
could find and kill more animals than any three 
hunters in his country. 

“I have heard that the curapira has been 
known to lead a negro into the forest and kill 
him. Then he would put on the dead man’s 
clothes and go to the negro’s house, imitate his 
voice, calling to his wife and children. Hear¬ 
ing the voice they thought to be their father’s. 


IT GETS DARK QUICKLY. 


59 


they would soon follow it until they got lost in 
the forest. Then the curapira would catch one 
to eat whenever he became hungry.’’ 

Up to this time the Indian had not caught a 
fish. It was getting late, and I knew that in 
this country when daylight went out it went 
almost as quickly as the turning out of an 
electric light. That we might not get caught 
in the dark, I gathered up some wood and 
brush and put them on the fire. The katydids 
began to sing, and the frogs began to croak. 
An Amazon otter came up out of the water 
and ran up on the bank, but when he saw me 
he jumped back. Then night was upon us, 
and with it came mosquitoes in such great 
numbers that I was afraid to open my mouth 
for fear they would fly into it. I saw the 
Indian jerk his line and throw out on the 
bank a fish about as long as your arm. I picked 
it up and was getting it ready to roast in the 
ashes when by the light of the burning brush 
I saw in a tree not far from the Indian two 
eyes that in the dark were shining as bright as 
coals of fire. 

I think I had better close this evening and 
tell you about this animal next time. 



Sixth Evening. 

C HILDREN, I will begin our story at 
once. I just pulled out my pistol and 
took good aim at one of the eyes shining 
in the tree. Bang! went my pistol. Splash! 
went the big animal into the river beside the 
Indian. With a yell the Indian jumped up and 
ran to me. The animal plunged around in the 
river for a little while and then was quiet. The 
Indian crept to the water’s edge, looked at him 
for a few moments, then cried: ^‘You are a 
good shot for a boy and have killed a devil’s 
beast. If you had not killed him, he would 
have killed me.” 

We got a long stick and pulled the dead 
tigerlike animal to the bank. What Fleetfoot 
called a devil’s beast was a black jaguar. The 
Indians and negroes are very much afraid of 
them. They say that alligators get so scared 
at the sight of a devil’s beast that they cannot 
move. Some even say that the alligator re- 
(6o) 












I HAD KILLED A DEVIL’S BEAST. 6i 


mains perfectly still while the jaguar eats off 
its tail. 


We now cooked supper, but when I tried to 
eat mine the mosquitoes wanted to eat me. The 
Indian calls the mosquito '‘ah.” Every now 



and then he would slap at those that swarmed 
around him and say: "Go away, ah.” 

The night was cool, and the fire did not feel 
too warm even after I had piled upon it an 
armful of brush and wood. I wanted a bright 
light so that I could see any animals that might 
come up to our camp. I still had some hopes 












62 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


that Samson would come back, and I sat watch¬ 
ing the fire burn and fighting mosquitoes until 
a strong wind rose and blew them away. 

The Indian said: ^T do not believe that Sam¬ 
son is ever coming back, and as you have saved 
my life I will help you in any way I can. I 
have known that negro a long time, and every 
once in a while he plays hookey from his mas¬ 
ter and goes to the Runaway Negro Village. 
These negroes have run away from their white 
masters and made this little village. When the 
soldiers are sent out to bring them back, the 
negroes run and hide in the woods and stay 
hid until the soldiers go away or die from a 
fever that negroes never have.” 

The moon rose above the tree tops, and its 
silver rays seemed to ride the waves and play 
hide-and-seek through the trees as the wind 
twisted and shook their branches. Old Sand¬ 
man seemed to have found his way to the is¬ 
land, for I was soon asleep. When I awoke 
the sun was shining, the birds were singing, 
the Indian had gone, and the fire was out. 

A lazy alligator was sunning himself on a 
log with his big mouth wide open, so that the 
flies and bugs would swarm on his tongue and 
lips. When 'you would think no more could 


TURTLE FOR BREAKFAST, 63 

find a place to light, he would shut his mouth 
and trap them for his breakfast. Turtles with 
shells on their backs as large as the top of a 
school desk were walking around on the sand. 
I was afraid to move; but when a snake came 
out of the river and began to crawl toward me, 
I sprang up, jumped over the turtles, and ran 
for the woods. As I ran I scared up a number 
of butterflies that gave off a disagreeable odor 
as they flew away: Then I heard the sound of 
some one digging, and I thought it must be the 
Indian. I soon found him, but I did not let 
him know that I had been scared. I asked him 
if he had eaten his breakfast. ‘‘No,’’ he an¬ 
swered, “I thought I would dig up some sarsa¬ 
parilla roots while it was cool and let you sleep 
as long as you could.” 

I then told him about the alligators and tur¬ 
tles. “That is good,” he cried. “I will catch a 
turtle for breakfast.” The Indian then cut a 
long stout pole and told me to stay behind. 
Without making a noise, he crept through the 
bushes until he got to the place where the tur¬ 
tles were; then, springing out with his pole, he 
turned two big turtles over on their backs. All 
the others ran into the river. 

The few clothes the Indian had on he took 


64 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


off and jumped into the water for a swim. 
Now, I had read that the alligators killed more 
people in Brazil than all the other animals, so 
at first I was afraid to go in; but the Indian 
called to me to come on, and I decided to take 
the chances, so in I plunged. 

The Indian killed one of the turtles and cut 
out some steak to cook. I made a fire, and we 
had fruit, turtle steak, and mandioca meal cakes 
for breakfast. This was a new kind of food for 
me; but I was as hungry as a hunter, and it all 
tasted good. The Indian thought that all we 
needed was some coffee to make it as good a 
breakfast as any one could want. 

After leaving his line for me to fish with, 
Fleetfoot went back to his work. The sun was 
now shining so hot that the birds were silent, 
but a gentle breeze made the palm leaves trem¬ 
ble and quiver. Little waves dashed and 
splashed at my feet as I sat holding my fishing 
pole and looking at the great field of water that 
stretched out before me. 

I was thinking of my uncle and of the folks 
at home when I heard something singing. The 
musical sound came from the water and seemed 
to be near me. I had heard that there lived in 
the rivers and lakes of Brazil girls with beauti- 


/ WANTED ONE FOR THE SHOW. 65 


ful faces, with long black hair, and with bodies 
the lower half of which was like that of a fish. 
These half-fish girls were called water maidens, 
and sometimes mermaids. It was said that 
when they saw a boy fishing they would put 
their pretty faces above the water and talk to 
him, making all kinds of promises to get him 
to go home with them 
for a playmate. They 
could sing sweetly and 
could cut all kinds of 
funny capers in the 
water; but if the boy 
had any sense, he 
would know that he 
could not live under 
the water and would 
get away from them 
as fast as he could. 

But some boys were so fond of music that they 
would listen to the water maidens sing and 
follow them farther and farther out into the 
water until they could never get back. I did 
not believe there were such things as mer¬ 
maids ; but should this be one I heard singing, 
I had made up my mind that I would catch her 
for the show. 

5 -- . . 



A WATER MAIDEN. 











66 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


I thrust my fishing pole into the mud and 
stepped out into the water that I might see her. 
At that moment my pole was jerked out of the 
mud, but I grabbed it as it went by me and was 
almost pulled into the river. Then the line 
broke. I wondered if it could have been the 
mermaid, for I never heard the music again 
that day, although I kept very quiet. 

When Fleetfoot returned he had all the sar¬ 
saparilla roots he could carry. I told him about 
the music I had heard in the water and asked 
him if he knew anything about the water maid¬ 
ens. He seemed to think that every one knew 
about the water maidens and said that I must 
not let them coax me into the river. What I 
had heard, he thought, must have been either a 
water maiden or a singing fish. He had never 
seen a water maiden, but he had caught a num¬ 
ber of singing fish. 

As Samson never returned for me, I had to 
remain on the island with the Indian for three 
days before we saw the boat with Fleetfoot’s 
brother in it coming up the river. As soon as 
the Indian reached us I asked him all about the 
white man that he had taken to his village. 
His answers to my questions made me sure 
that the man was my Uncle Will. 


PULLED TO SHORE BY MY HAIR, 67 

I helped the Indians put the sarsaparilla 
roots and the turtle meat into the boat, got in 
with them, and we pushed off. Fleetfoot tak¬ 
ing one of the paddles and I using the other, 
we shot over the water as though it had been 
oiled until we left the Amazon to go up a big 
river that flowed from the south. 

Now and then an alligator would poke his 
head out of the water and swim by us. Before 
dark Fleetfoot pulled our boat to the bank 
where there was a spring of cool, clear water, 
and we cooked our supper. The air was sweet 
with the perfume of palm blossoms, and hum¬ 
ming birds of rainbow colors flew from flower- 
er to flower sucking the sweets. Fleetfoot ex¬ 
plained to me that the birds were kissing the 
flowers, but I knew that they were getting 
honey for their supper. 

We rested a while at this beautiful place, 
made our supper on mandioca bread, wild fruit, 
and the turtle meat that we had left from din¬ 
ner. When we got into our boat the moon was 
shining, the frogs were croaking, the katydids 
were chirping—the whole forest was noisy with 
the sounds of insects and animals. I was very 
tired; and I must have gone to sleep and fallen 
into the river, for when I came to myself one 


68 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


of the Indians was holding me by the hair to 
keep me from drowning while the other one 
was pulling our boat to shore. 

You children can think about what I have 
told you this evening, and when we meet again 
I hope I shall not be so sleepy. 



Seventh Evening. 

I CAN tell you I was surprised when I 
found myself in the cool water, but soon 
the boat was near the bank and I could feel 
the bottom of the river with my feet. The In¬ 
dian turned my hair loose, and I scrambled 
ashore, cold and shivering, for, although the 
days are very hot in Brazil, the nights are some¬ 
times cool. Fleetfoot built a fire, and while I 
dried my clothes the Indians took a nap. Some¬ 
thing began to hammer on a tree not far from 
me, and I felt sure it must be a curapira and 
wondered if he would come near the fire. I 
thought I should like to see him, but I hoped 
Fleetfoot would wake up before he came too 
close. Big bats with wings as wide as your 
arm is long flew so close to me that I got a 
stick and struck at them, but they were always 
too quick and dodged my blows. 

The moon went down, and at some distance 
from us in the darkness I had just caught sight 

(69) 



























70 


CHARLIE CIRCUS, 


of what seemed to be little hills of coals of fire 
covered with ashes when the Indians jumped 
up and, as they ran to the boat, called me to 
come quick. As we pulled up the river Fleet- 
foot told me that an army of ants that travel 
by night as well as day were on the march, and 
we were in its way; and that these ants march 
five or six side by side, and some of the lines 
are three or four miles long. When they bite 
you it feels like being touched with a red-hot 
wire. Fleetfoot told me that the fiery-looking 
little hills I had seen were phosphorescent ant 
hills, and that he expected a big fight when this 
army of midnight travelers came to the homes 
of these other ants. 

All night we paddled up the stream, and at 
sunrise we came to a great lake. Near the 
banks the water was not very deep. Great 
numbers of herons had come to make their 
breakfast off the fish they could catch, but on 
seeing us they flew away. In some places the 
water was covered with the leaves of a plant 
that was as large as a bedroom floor. The 
leaves were cupped all around the edge like a 
pie pan. Fleetfoot called them alligator roast¬ 
ing pans. At home I had seen this kind of plant 
in the ponds around fountains. They were 


BITTEN BY A CANNIBAL FISH. 


71 


• 

called Victoria Regia, but I had never seen any 
as wonderfully large as these growing wild 
upon this lake. A single leaf was so big that 
a child could step from leaf to leaf and walk 
quite a distance out on the lake. The upper 
part of these leaves was a glossy green, the un¬ 
der part a violet crimson. The flowers begin 
to unfold at sunset; and in the morning, when 
the blossoms are open, they are much larger 
than big dinner plates and are pure white, but 
in a few hours they turn a rose color and then 
change to a bright red. 

It was hard, slow work to get our boat 
through these big-leaved lilies, and by noon we 
were worn out and pulled for the shore. We 
had no food, but we thought we would take a 
swim before we went hunting. I was the first 
one to dive into the water, but I came up with 
a yell. Something had bitten a piece out of my 
foot. I ran up on the bank, and as soon as the 
Indians looked at the bloody wound they knew 
that a cannibal fish had bitten me. Fleetfoot 
tied up the place as best he could; and although 
the bite was not very bad, I felt a little sick and 
lay down in the shade. 

Fleetfoot got out his fishing line, while his 
brother got a long pole and began beating on 


72 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 



WHERE WE CAUGHT CANNIBAL FISH. 






























































WILL EAT UP A MAN. 


73 


the water. Each time he would hit the lake 
hundreds of these cannibal fish rushed up to 
where he struck the water, and Fleetfoot caught 
them as fast as he could throw his line in and 
pull them out. In ten minutes he had thrown 
a dozen or more on the bank, some as long* as 
from your finger tips to your elbow. They 
jumped and floundered on the ground trying 
to get back into the water. I got a stick, and 
whenever they came too near the lake I threw 
them far back on the bank. They snapped and 
bit at me with their razorlike teeth and never 
gave up the fight until Fleetfoot’s brother cut 
their heads ofif to cook them for dinner. I know 
of no other fish that can be called up by beating 
on the water. If a school of these fish should 
catch you far out on the lake, they would eat 
you up before you could get to land. Some¬ 
times, when they are very hungry, a great num¬ 
ber will get together and fight a big fish to 
death and eat him. If the big fish kills some of 
them, these cannibal fish will eat their dead 
mates. 

The sun was too hot for us to be on the 
water, so we remained in the shade until late 
that afternoon, when we got into our boats 
and continued on our journey, keeping near 


74 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


the shore. Now and then I would see long, 
hairy caterpillars that wriggled along over the 
water just as an eel does. I took a shot at some 
of the long-legged ramrod chickens as they ran 
over the big lily leaves catching bugs, worms, 
and other insects. These chickens have toes 
longer than a man’s hand and so spread that 
they will not punch holes in the leaves. 

At one place I called Fleetfoot to look under 
a big hollow tree where the ground was cov¬ 
ered with skeletons of monkeys and other 
bones. “I am afraid to look at that tree,” 
Fleetfoot replied. ‘The old Indians say that 
a long time ago that tree was the home of the 
bird of the evil eye. If any man or animal came 
near the tree and the bird peeped out at him, 
he dropped dead, and the bird then ate all the 
flesh off his bones. One day a hunter came by 
and saw the bones under the tree. He looked 
up and spied the bird, but the bird of the evil 
eye did not see him, and before it could turn 
its head the hunter shot the bird and it fell to 
the ground. The man then crept up to the 
dead bird in such a way that he did not pass 
before its eyes, then with his knife he cut off 
the bird’s head, wrapped it in his handkerchief, 
and put it into his hunting bag. 


THE BIRD OF THE EVIL EYE, 


75 


^'Ever after when that hunter saw a deer or 
any other animal he wanted to kill he would 
take out the head with the evil eye and point 
the bill toward the game and it would fall dead; 
but he was always very careful not to turn the 
bill toward himself. The man’s wife wanted 
to know how it was that he always had such 
good luck in hunting; but whenever she would 
ask him to tell her he would always say: This 
is no business of yours. A woman must not 
know everything.’ But she made up her mind 
that she zvould know, and day after day she 
would slip out into the woods and watch her 
husband. Once, when a deer passed by, she 
saw that her husband took something from his 
hunting bag and pointed it toward the game 
and the deer fell dead. She went back home, 
saying to herself: T will find out what that is 
that he killed the deer with.’ 

‘^As usual, after dinner the hunter went to 
sleep. His wife then stole up to him and softly 
opened his hunting bag, took out the head of 
the bird of the evil eye, and, turning it about, 
she said to herself: ^He held it so, with the bill 
turned toward the deer.’ As she spoke she 
turned the head against her husband’s body, 
and he at once died. She was so badly scared 


76 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


at what she had done that she jumped back; 
but in doing this she turned the deadly bill to¬ 
ward herself, and she also fell dead.” 

I told Fleetfoot that I did not believe there 
ever was a bird of the evil eye, and if there 
ever had been one it was now dead, and that I 
should not be afraid to go under the tree where 
the bones were. He did not like what I said, 
and replied: ^'You can do as you wish, but I 
would not go near the tree.” ‘^Neither would 
I,” said his brother, ‘‘and I am glad we have 
passed it.” 

Some distance ahead of us was a point of land 
reaching far out into the lake, and by the time 
we had paddled around this point the sun was 
going down. As the Indians did not want to 
be out on the water at night, we pulled our boat 
toward an Indian hut that was nestled among 
the vines and palm trees. Several men, women, 
children, and dogs came down to the water’s 
edge to meet us. These people knew the Indians 
who were with me, but from the way the dogs 
sniffed the air and barked at me, I was sure 
they had never seen a white man; and as the 
odor from a white man’s body is so different 
from the smell given off by the body of an In- 


PARROTS SICKED THE DOGS ON ME. 77 


dian, the dogs became so mad that they wanted 
to tear me to pieces. 

On the roof of the hut, out of the way of the 
dogs, tame monkeys chattered and pranced 
about or sat looking at us in such a way that 
one would think they were picking their teeth 
with the end of their tails. 

Pet parrots with the most beautiful feathers 
were perched on the trees or swinging in the 
vines near the doorway. At one moment these 
birds scolded at the dogs for keeping up so much 
fuss; at the next moment they were sicking 
them on me. 

The inside of this hut was like all Indian huts 
in that part of Brazil. There were no beds to 
be seen, for all the people sleep in hammocks, 
and the ground was the floor. 

The Indians living in this hut treated us kindly 
and did everything that Indians could do to 
please visitors. But as night came on I found 
I could hardly live for the rats, mice, and in¬ 
sects that made their homes in and about these 
huts. Little insects and flying bugs were bad 
enough before the sun went down, but during 
the night untold numbers crept from their hid¬ 
ing places to tear me to pieces. Some were 
bloodsuckers, some scratched and raked at 


78 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


your skin as though they were preparing a gar¬ 
den, while others gave off such horrible odors 
that you would have to hold your nose. 

There were little insects with shells so hard 

that you could step 
on them and not 
crush them. Others 
were round, soft, and 
watery. Great cen¬ 
tipedes, or thousand- 
legs, with poisonous 
fangs, together with 
lizards and snakes, 
played about the 
walls and ceilings. You may know that I did 
not rest well, and at daylight I was ready to 
spring out of my hammock when I heard some 
one call: ^'The ant thrushes are coming! The 
ant thrushes are coming!” 

I think this is a good place to close bur story 
for this evening. 



THINGS IN A DROP OF WATER. 











Eighth Evening. 

OW, children, there was great excite¬ 
ment among the Indians at seeing the 
ant thrushes, and, running into their 
hut, they threw open all their boxes and trunks. 

I ran out to see the ant thrushes, and found 
that they were odd-looking, short-tailed birds. 
A number of these birds fairly glittered in their 
feather coats. Some 
were blue, some were 
green, some were a 
copper red, and a few 
were purple, while 
others were white or 
brown. I learned from 
Fleetfoot that these army of ants. 

birds liked to eat ants, 

and when an army of these foraging insects 
were on the march ant thrushes were nearly 
always seen. And although every one has to 
run from home when the ants come, the peo- 

(79) 



























8o 


CHARLIE CIRCUS, 


pie are glad to have a visit from them; for the 
foraging ants drive away or kill every rat, 
mouse, lizard, or other creeper about the 
house, and it was for this reason that the In¬ 
dians opened their trunks and boxes, so the 
ants could go into them and kill the bugs they 
were sure to find. 

I wanted to see these strange ant soldiers, 
and I watched the army as it came over an 
open space and swarmed into the hut. The 
line must have been two or three blocks long. 
The ant officers, with their big white heads 
bobbing up and down, ran from one place to 
another along the line, keeping the soldiers in 
order. These wonderful creatures were longer 
than your finger nail; but as I dared not get 
close to them, I could not see their tiny eyes. 

When the armv entered the hut, there was 
not a crack or corner that the soldiers did not 
enter to search for insects. Great cockroaches 
were dragged out of their hiding places and 
carried away; even the scorpions and centipedes 
were taken ofif by the ants for food. 

It took this great army a very little time to 
catch every living thing in the hut. Then each 
soldier, loaded with all he could carry, was 
marched back to the city of the ants in the same 


WARRIOR ANTS HAVE TO BE FED, 8i 


orderly way that they had been marched to the 
hut. 

Upon our returning to the hut, no living in¬ 
sect could be seen, but on the floor lay a num¬ 
ber of dead ants that had been killed while bat¬ 
tling with larger and stronger enemies. 

While breakfast was being prepared Fleet- 
foot told me of a kind of ant in Brazil called 
the Amazon ant. These ants do no work; and 
although they cannot feed themselves, they are 
fierce fighters and great soldiers. They make 
war on other ants, taking the young ones pris¬ 
oners to bring them up as slaves. These slave 
ants have to do all the work about the ant city. 
Some are put to care for and bring up the 
young; others have to prepare the food and 
feed their masters as a nurse feeds a baby. 
The Amazon ants are good to their servants, 
for without them they would starve to death, 
since they cannot feed themselves. To make 
sure that they will always have enough serv¬ 
ants, the warriors from time to time go on the 
war path to capture an ant village and bring 
home the young ants to be brought up as slaves. 

I had heard so much about ants that I knew 
Fleetfoot was telling me the truth about these 
wonderful little creatures, and nothing could 
6 


§2 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


have interested me more than to have found a 
village to watch the things they did; but I was 
so anxious to see the white man at Fleetfoot’s 
home that after breakfast I hurried the Indians 
to start on our journey. As we got into our 
boat Fleetfoot spied some alligators on the bank 
of the lake some distance away. He ran back 
to tell his friends in the hut of what he had 
seen, and they came out armed with bows, ar¬ 
rows, spears, and big clubs. The children got 
their bows and spears and, with their parents, 
sneaked through the bushes and vines upon the 
lazy-looking reptiles. 

On the end of each spear handle that the 
Indians carried a long line was tied. The In¬ 
dians had loose points which they slipped over 
their arrows. These points had a string fas¬ 
tened to them which was wound around the 
arrow shaft, and Fleetfoot’s brother told me 
that as soon as the barbed point was shot into 
the alligator he made for the water. The point 
dropped off the arrow, and the string unwound 
as the reptile went to the bottom, leaving the 
long part of the arrow to float on the top of 
the water. It was by watching this floating 
arrow, with one end of the string fastened to 
it and the other to the point in the body of the 


THE ALLIGATOR IS KING. 83 

alligator, that they could tell the direction the 
alligator was going. 

My foot was too sore for me to go with 
the Indians, but from the boat I could watch 
the reptiles as they lay on the sand sunning 
themselves. As alligators have no lips to 
hide their teeth, these huge reptiles have a 
dreadfully scary and savage look; and they 
are as savage as they look, for while they live 
on wild ducks and such other birds and animals 
as they can catch in the water or on the land, 
they enjoy eating a man as well as anything 
else. They are clumsy in their movements on 
shore; but by the use of their flat, oarlike tails 
they can move about very fast and nimbly in 
the water. They can chase and capture fish, 
or come up under a duck or other bird on the 
water and grab it in their big mouths. Al¬ 
though he is said to be the king of the rivers 
and lakes, he has such a good appetite that he 
will eat every old dead animal that he can find. 

I was beginning to think that the Indians 
were a long time getting within shooting dis¬ 
tance of the monsters, when an arrow flew 
through the air, striking one of the alligators. 
The reptile jumped into the lake, all the others 
following him. The Indians came out of the 


84 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


bushes, making signs to us to bring the boat. 
Upon reaching them, all our things were taken 
out of the boat. Two men, with their bows, 
arrows, clubs, and barbed spears, got in with 
us, and we began to chase the arrow shaft that 
floated on the lake. Sometimes it was pulled 
under the water, but we could again see it 



OUR FIGHT WITH THE ALLIGATOR. 


when the reptile had to come up to get his 
breath. At one time we lost all sight of it, and 
we were about to give up the chase when the 
alligator came to the top of the water along¬ 
side of our boat. As quick as thought one of 
the Indians with all his strength drove a spear 











































FIGHT WITH AN ALLIGATOR, 85 

into the reptile’s body, but as he did the Indian 
lost his balance and plunged into the lake. 

As a rule alligators are great cowards and 
will not fight, but this one circled about and 
made a rush at the man as he was climbing into 
the boat. I fired at the monster, but did not 
stop him; and he was about to close his jaws 
on the man when Fleetfoot drove a spear into 
the alligator’s head just behind the eye. The 
reptile plunged about a few moments, making 
the water foam as he struck at our boat with 
his powerful tail, then he sank to the bottom 
of the lake, and the lines tied to the end of the 
spears were let out as he went down, like a 
boy lets out the string on his kite as it goes 
up. 

But the old fellow could not remain on the 
bottom, and when he came up for air we gave 
him another spear; then he raced over the lake 
for a short distance at a fearful speed, carry¬ 
ing our boat with him. It looked to me as if 
we would be upset, or that our boat would be 
torn to pieces by the monster; but the Indians 
knew their business and continued to let the 
reptile go down and come up until he was about 
drowned. 

Then the men tightened the ropes and care- 


86 


CHARLIE CIRCUS, 


fully paddled toward the shore, dragging the 
alligator after us. While we were doing this 
the cannibal fish swarmed about him, biting 
pieces out of his body at places not covered by 
hard scales. But our prize seemed to have 
nine lives and was as hard to kill as a cat, for 
after we had dragged him on land he snapped 
at me with his big jaws and tried to bat us with 
his huge tail. He looked like the pictures I 
had seen of crocodiles that li\^e along the Nile 
River, in Africa, and that the people, hundreds 
of years ago, worshiped as sacred reptiles. 

Some of the Egyptians kept these horrid 
crocodiles in little lakes near their churches 
and had men to care for and feed them on cake, 
roast meat, and a kind of wine. These sacred 
crocodiles wore gold and diamond earrings, 
had gold bracelets on their forepaws—and, in 
fact, nothing was too fine for them to wear or 
too good for them to eat. When a sacred croc¬ 
odile died, the body was embalmed by filling it 
with spices and perfumes. It was then wrapped 
in fine linen that had been soaked in a gummy, 
sweet-smelling kind of oil. After this was 
done, a grand funeral was had, and the body 
was placed in a stone vault, or cave, where 
they are now found just as they were buried. 


A BIRD PICKS ALLIGATOR'S TEETH. 87 

A man in our show who had lived in Egypt 
told me that the crocodile cannot see very well 
while under water, but he is quick-sighted on 
land, and that all beasts and birds keep out of 
his way except a bird that he allows to go into 
his mouth to clean his teeth. This bird lives 
on the bugs and other food sticking to the rep¬ 
tile’s gums and the pieces of meat that he finds 
between the crocodile’s teeth. 

When hunting crocodiles my friend had 
often seen grayish-colored birds about as large 
as a pigeon walking up and down on the backs 
and around the nose of the reptiles. If these 
birds saw a man or other creature coming too 
near the crocodile, they would fly up, scream¬ 
ing: ^‘Zic-zac! zic-zac!” This ‘‘Zic-zac! zic- 
zac!” scream was to warn the huge reptile of 
danger, so he could plunge into the water and 
get out of the way. 

I was about to ask Fleetfoot if the alligator 
had bird friends like the crocodile, but at that 
moment a canoe with two men in it came in 
sight. The Indians were busy cutting the alli¬ 
gator to pieces and putting the chunks of meat 
on a pole over a fire, so that it would be in the 
smoke and at the same time dry out before they 
took it home. But they left their work, and we 


88 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


watched the canoe as it came toward us; but, 
like all young Indians, Fleetfoot could see far¬ 
ther than a white man, and before I could tell 
that the men in the canoe were Indians my 
friend said that they were from his village. 
He told me that the men in the canoe were 
known as Quickstep and Longrun, because they 
could so quickly take messages from place to 
place for their chief. 

The canoe was landed close to our boat, and 
Quickstep came forward to tell us that a war¬ 
like tribe of Indians had come into their coun¬ 
try and built a village on the bank of a river 
that emptied into the lake, far to the south of 
us. This tribe of Indians had sent a messen¬ 
ger to his chief asking him to join them in a 
war on the white people. Quickstep said that 
his chief did not want to go to war against his 
white friends and had ordered him to find 
Fleetfoot and his brother, and together they 
must go to the village of the red men and tell 
them that their chief was not prepared to go to 
war. They were to find out how many war¬ 
riors there were among the wild Indians, and 
if they were armed with guns or had only bows, 
arrows, and spears to fight with. 

I was disheartened after hearing all Quick- 


A DANGEROUS JOURNEY, 


89 


step had to say, for I knew it meant that I 
could not get to the village to see the white man. 
I asked Quickstep and Longrun about the white 
man at their village, but neither of them had 
seen him. The only thing they knew was that 
Fleetfoot had brought a man to their hut. 

Even if I had known the way to the village, 
my foot was too sore for me to have walked, 
and the only thing for me to do was to put my 
trust in God and go with my friends to the far¬ 
away Indian village. 

Smoked turtle and alligator meat, with our 
mandioca meal, was packed away in the boats. 
Fleetfoot and his brother took their places in 
the canoe with me, while Quickstep and Long- 
run, armed with their bows, arrows, and spears, 
got in their boat. The Indians took up their 
paddles and, with a heavy heart, I saw the 
boats shoot from the shore, and we began our 
long and dangerous journey to the village of 
the savage red men. 

I know you will be interested in our next 
story. 





Ninth Evening. 


Y OU children will be surprised when I 
tell you that the Indians began to race 
for the other side of the lake, and their 
boats went over the water at such a rapid rate 
that in a short time we were so far from land 
that the trees looked as small as bushes. Quick¬ 
step’s canoe was soon so far ahead of my boat 
that it looked like a chip floating upon the 
water. From time to time I took the paddle 
from one of my companions, so that first one 
and then the other might rest, and in this way 
by the middle of the day we had overtaken 
Quickstep, and passed him. The race was over, 
for the Indians in the other canoe had worked 
themselves down and could not more than move 
their boat along. 

In a little while after we had passed Quick¬ 
step Fleetfoot gave a shout, for he could see 
land. We were tired and weary when we 
reached the shore where a mighty river emp- 

( 90 ) 











FISH THAT LIVE OUT OF WATER. gi 


tied into the lake. The moment we landed the 
Indians plunged into the water for a bath, and 
after coming out they lay down in the shade 
and went to sleep. 

As soon as the other boat landed Longrun 
and Quickstep did as the others had done, and 
I was the only one left on guard. I could see 
a long way up the river, and here and there a 
log floated upon the water. Riding on one of 
these logs was a strange-shaped creature with 
a horrid-looking head. From where I stood it 
appeared to me that a number of small snakes 
had fastened themselves to his head and were 
wiggling about his face. If the creature had 
been very large, I should have awakened my 
companions, but as the log floated nearer to me 
I saw that the horrid thing was some kind of 
fish that had climbed up on the log to sun him¬ 
self and breathe the fresh air. What I had 
taken to be snakes were long, whiskerlike 
feelers. 

I had never heard of real fish that liked to 
come out of the water and sun themselves, but 
I soon learned that more different kinds of 
strange fish lived in the waters of Brazil than 
in any other country in the world. I had never 
seen such a place to fish as at the mouth of this 


92 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


river, for there had been a long dry spell in 
that part of the country, and the fish were 
crowding into the big lakes and rivers for fear 
the small streams would dry up. 

Great numbers of strange-looking fish were 

playing about near 
the bank; and as I 
wanted some for our 
supper, I threw in 
my line. They 
snapped at my hook 
as soon as it touched 
the water, and in a 
little while I had 
caught enough for 
our meal. 

I made the Indians 
get up and build a 
fire; but when our 
fish were cooked they 
had such a dreadful 
odor, so much like musk, that I preferred to 
eat the smoked alligator meat we had brought 
with us. 

The Indians were anxious to be on their 
journey up the river; but I needed some sleep, 
and I made them watch while I took a nap. 







































CHASED BY THE INDIANS. 


93 


I was awakened with a start, for Fleetfoot 
and his brother had me between them and 
were making for the boat. I was pushed into 
the canoe, and the men shoved the boats from 
the shore just as a band of Indians rushed be¬ 
tween us and the bright fire we had built. 

They were big men, with their chins painted 
red, and with black streaks tattooed on each 
side of their faces from the corners of their 
mouths to their temples. We were almost to 
the middle of the river when they saw us. They 
shot some arrows at us; and one of the red 
men jumped into the river to follow our boats, 
but he had no sooner struck the water than an 



AN ALLIGATOR STOPS THE INDIANS. 































94 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


alligator had him. With their spears between 
their teeth, the other red men plunged in to 
save their companion, but we never stopped to 
see if they killed the alligator. 

Fleetfoot told me that the Indians we had 
seen belonged to a tribe that had no village; 
for they roamed over the country from place 
to place, living on fruit, fish, and the wild ani¬ 
mals that they killed. This tribe hated the 
white man because Spanish traders had the 
habit of stealing or capturing their children 
and making slaves of them. 

Day after day we journeyed up the river, 
resting during the hot part of the day, but 
traveling until late in the night. Arriving at 
a place where there was an old hut on the bank 
of the river. Quickstep said that some Indians 
had a village a few miles back from this old 
hut and that he wanted to visit them and learn 
from the people all he could about the bad In¬ 
dians we were on our way to visit. 

We hid our canoes, and early in the morning 
we began our journey through the woods to the 
Indian village. Our food had almost given 
out, and it was decided that we would stop at 
a white man’s house on the way and get food. 
But when we arrived at the place we found that 


A DREADFUL-LOOKING MONSTER. 95 

the house had been burned and that the fields of 
tobacco, mandioca, Indian corn, rice, and wa¬ 
termelons, together with the orchard of cocoa 
trees, had been destroyed. The garden of cab¬ 
bages, onions, and other vegetables had been 
ruined. We were sure that the Indians who 
had so nearly captured us had ruined this farm. 

We were glad to find at this place a fruit as 
large as a chikbs head, the inside of which 
looked so much like custard that I called it 
‘kustard fruit.’’ It should have been eaten 
with a spoon, but it tasted good even though 
we had to use our hands instead of spoons in 
eating it. We had been living on fish and alli¬ 
gator meat so long that we were in no hurry 
to leave a place where we could get such de¬ 
licious fruit and a few chickens to eat. 

We remained here so long eating fruit and 
chickens that it was late in the afternoon when 
we came near the Indian village. The sun was 
yet shining; but as we were going through a 
dark, gloomy part of the woods I was startled 
by the sight of a dreadful-looking monster with 
red skin and long, shaggy red hair hanging 
halfway down his back. Following this mon¬ 
ster was a manlike creature, who had a head 
on his shoulders like that of an ox. Other 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


96 

strange creatures came out of the woods. 
Some of them looked like jaguars, some like 
deer, some like tapirs, and some like goats. I 
felt better when Fleetfoot told me that these 
horrid-looking creatures were Indians who 
lived in the village we were going to visit, and 
that they had gone to the woods and dressed 
up to look like different kinds of animals, for 
it was the time of year for them to have what 
we would call a masquerade party. 

We joined the procession and entered the 
village with the Indians who were dressed up 
to look like animals. We found men, women, 
and children in front of their huts watching 
for the parade. At first they were more sur¬ 
prised and interested in us than in the other 
part of the parade, but the fun soon began and 
we were forgotten. 

A jaguar would jump at a crowd of chil¬ 
dren, and with screams they would scatter in 
every direction. A tapir would catch one of 
the Indian girls and'play that he was going to 
take her to his home in the forest. A goat 
would slip up behind some man and butt him 
over and then run away. And so, hour after 
hour, the fun went on. Near morning the men 
dressed as animals went back to the woods and 


LIZARDS ABOUT GIRLS' NECKS. 97 

returned home dressed as the other Indians to 
join in a big dinner the women had prepared 
for them. 

No woman is allowed to dress up like these 
men or to masquerade with them; and should 
one follow them into the woods and see them 
dress themselves as animals or watch them 
when they went back to hide their masquerade 
clothes, she would be put to death. These mas- 
Cjuerade parties are secret societies, or clubs, 
that no woman is allowed to know anything 
about. 

The people in this village were very kind to 
us; and there being plenty of food, we wanted 
for nothing. In fact, we were so well treated 
that my companions were in no hurry to con¬ 
tinue our journey. 

Although I wanted to get back to my uncle, 
there were so many strange things for me to 
see that I did not know how fast the time was 
passing. In every direction there were pet 
monkeys grinning at me; parrots fussed and 
screamed as they climbed about the huts; live 
birds perched on the shoulders of the Indian 
women, while lizards played about the girls’ 
necks. I saw the Indian babies fed and each 
one put in a hammock, where it remained—and 

7 


98 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


remained quiet — until time to feed it again, 
while larger children ran about the village do¬ 
ing what they pleased. The men sat in the 
shade making fancywork of beads, feathers, 
and shells, and told hunting and fishing stories. 
The women did all the hard work in the fields. 
They were making clay pots and pans to be 
used in cooking. From the forest they brought 
back the fruit we ate and the wood to cook 
with. It was well for the women that the bees 
in that part of Brazil had no stingers, for it 
was they who had to bring in the honey to 
make a sour drink for their husbands. The 
honey the bees make in some parts of Brazil 
is so sour that in making this drink one part 
of honey is used with six times* as much water, 
and is then sweetened to taste with sugar, as 
we make lemonade. 

We learned that we were now about three 
days’ journey from the village of the savage 
Indians, who had such hatred for the white 
man that they would be sure to kill me and 
probably kill my companions for being with a 
white man. These savages are very much 
afraid of a gun or pistol, so Fleetfoot thought 
it best for me to go with them to guard the 
boats and help them, should they get in a fight 


A SPLASH IN THE WATER. 


99 


with the bad red men. I had no other idea 
than to go with my companions, and we re¬ 
turned to our boats that we might continue our 
journey. 

It was night when we reached the river. 
Being a little ahead of the others, I took my 
seat in one of the boats that had been hidden 
under the bushes that overhung the water. 
As I sat there looking at the moon, which was 
shining as I had never seen it shine, and at the 
stars, which were brighter than any stars I 
had ever seen, there came a splash in the water. 
Looking out over the river, I was startled at 
seeing just above the surface of the water 
what appeared to be the head of a huge bull¬ 
dog. The ugly thing was swimming right to¬ 
ward my boat, and I took out my pistol to pro¬ 
tect myself. But he did not see me. Coming 
out of the river, he waddled up the bank on his 
four very short legs. The Indians had seen 
the animal, and when some one threw a stone 
at him he disappeared as if the earth had 
swallowed him. Longrun told me that it was 
a river dog, or fresh-water seal, and that he 
lived upon fish and always made a hole in the 
bank of the river for his home and the home of 
his young. 


100 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


The food we had procured from the village 
was packed away in our canoe; and as the best 
time to travel in hot countries is on moonlight 
nights, we pushed our boats out into the river 
and paddled upstream. It was many hours 
before we landed our canoes to rest until 
morning. At sunrise I was awakened by a 
splashing and plunging in the water. The 
noise was being made by huge animals that 
were catching fish. They were of a slate color, 
about ten feet long, with a head something like 
that of a hippopotamus, and each one must 
have weighed as much as a horse. I felt that 
they could not hurt me, for they had no feet 
and legs so they could come out of the water. 
Every time they made a dive for a fish they 
had to come up to the surface to blow and to 
breathe, as does the whale. 

These animals looked as though they might 
be good to eat, and I wanted the Indians to 
spear one, as they had done the alligator; but 
Fleetfoot would not think of such a thing as 
killing a stub-nose, or porpoise, as he called 
them. As we pulled up the river he told me 
that any one who killed a stub-nose would have 
bad luck as long as he lived; that any one who 
burned oil made from the fat of these animals 


INDIANS MIMIC THE CALL OF BIRDS. loi 


would go blind; and that, really, a stub-nose 
was a kind of mermaid. They sometimes 
turned themselves into beautiful women with 
long-, loose hair hanging down to their heels 
as they walked through the streets of the village 
trying to get young men to go down to the 
river with them. If any fellow were so foolish 
as to go, a mermaid would grab him around 
the waist and jump into the water, carrying 
the young man with her. I knew the Indians 
believed in such stories, but to me it was noth¬ 
ing more than a fairy tale. 

The farther up the river we went, the more 
watchful we were for savage Indians. When¬ 
ever we landed it was in a place where no one 
could see us or our boats, and we were even 
afraid to make a fire for fear some Indians 
might see the smoke. If a bird screamed, or 
if we heard the yelp or growl of any animal, 
my companions became quiet that they might 
better listen in a deathlike silence, for Indians 
mimic the call of birds and wild animals as 
signs and signals to each other when they are 
stealing upon their enemies. So well do they 
imitate the voices of the birds and animals of 
the forest that only a man with a well-trained 


102 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


ear can tell if the sound is made by an Indian 
or by some creature of the jungle. 

As we neared the village we always traveled 
at night, for fear an Indian might see the white 
man, and while hiding during the day two men 
were always on guard. 

When Fleetfoot and I were on guard the 
time did not seem long, for he told me such 
interesting stories about Brazilian Indians. 
He said that among some Indians when a man 
dies all his tools, bows, arrows, spears, war 
clubs, shell necklaces, and fine feather clothes 
are put in a pile and set on fire. As they burn, 
his relatives and friends circle around the fire, 
crying and wailing as loud as they can. Those 
who can cry the loudest and longest are con¬ 
sidered the best friends, and presents are made 
to them of the dead man’s things that are not 
to be burned. The friends do not bring flow¬ 
ers as they do in this country when any one 
dies, but beautiful colored feathers, and while 
his relatives and companions dance and sing 
around the dead man his friends glue the 
feathers onto his body. The leader of the sing¬ 
ers will ask the dead man where he has gone 
and if he is happy. The other singers will 
answer back: ‘^He is no more;” ‘Tt is all over 


INDIANS IVHO EAT PRISONERS. 103 

with him;” “Think no more of him/’ Then 
the leader, speaking for the man, will say: “I 
am in a beautiful land. Give me some tobacco. 
Put my pipe between my lips. I am in need 
of nothing, but be sure to place water at my 
grave.’’ Then the singers in sorrowful voices 
say: ‘Tt is all over with him. It is all over.” 

At the head and foot of the grave a Y- 
shaped stake about three feet high is driven 
into the ground, on which are hung tassels 
made of feathers and beautiful little toys to 
keep away ghosts and hobgoblins. A strong 
rope is stretched from one stake to the other 
to hold the palm-leaf matting, making a little 
tent over the grave, and in this little tent some 
gourds filled with water and some filled with 
food are placed. Indians who bury their dead 
in this way believe that the spirits of their 
loved ones remain about the graves for many 
days and must have food and water. 

Fleetfoot told me that when the savage In¬ 
dians caught a white man or captured an In¬ 
dian in war they invited all their friends from 
other villages to have a big dance and feast 
ofif the prisoner. I had never heard of the 
Indians in North America eating their pris¬ 
oners; and I hoped that my companion was 


104 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


mistaken about the savage Indians of Brazil 
being cannibals, or man-eaters, for I did not 
enjoy the thought of being eaten, should I be 
taken prisoner. 

We shall now close the story for this 
ning. 


eve- 



Tenth Evening. 

A fter listening to all the stories that 
Fleetfoot had told me about the In¬ 
dians, I can tell you, children, that I 
did not feel very light-hearted that night when 
we pushed our boats out into the river. 

As the moon came up it made the water look 
like melted silver flowing through the land. 
We paddled our boats to the shady side, so we 
could not be seen, and pulled along with as lit¬ 
tle noise as possible. It was almost daylight 
when we selected a place to land and hide our 
boats, for we were as near the Indian village 
as I dared to go. It was agreed that I should 
remain with the boats while my companions 
walked to the village to deliver the message 
from their chief and, after having carried out 
his orders, returned to me. 

It took the Indians but a little while to eat 
their breakfast, pack up some food for the 
journey, and be off. O! but it was a lonesome 

(105) 












io6 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


feeling that came over me when I saw them go 
into the woods, for they expected to be gone 
three days and two nights. All this time I was 
to guard the boats—and guard them alone in 
a Brazilian forest where wild animals and sav¬ 
age red men made their homes. There was 
some comfort in listening to the beautiful birds 
as they sang a welcome to the new day, and in 
watching some of them that had curiosity 

enough to come close to 
me that they might see 
the new kind of animal 
that had come into the 
forest or find out what 
business he had there. 
I did not watch the 
birds very long, for I 
needed rest; and, pull¬ 
ing the bushes close 
about the boat, I lay 
down in the bottom of 
it and was asleep be¬ 
fore I could finish my 
prayers. 

I am sure I would 
have slept all day, but 
late in the afternoon I 









HIS BILL AS STRONG AS A VISE. 107 

was awakened by something hitting me in the 
face. And what do you think it was ? Perched 
on a limb over me was a most beautiful parrot 
eating a palm nut, and it was the shells drop¬ 
ping in my face that awakened me. The bird 
was about three feet long from his head to the 
end of his tail, and the feathers on his body 
were a soft blue; but he had no feathers near 
his eyes, and the skin was a creamy white. 
His bill must have been as strong as a vise; 
for while he could crack the nuts with as much 
ease as a child would crack a peanut, I had to 
get a big rock to crack one that he dropped in 
my boat. 

There was nothing for me to do but to be 
quiet; and when one remains silent and still for 
a long time on the bank of a river in a great 
forest, he sees and learns many things about 
the fish, birds, and animals. 

A number of wild ducks swam close to my 
boat and were diving in the water after food 
when an ugly alligator floated down and caught 
one in his big mouth; but the others flew away 
before they too were caught. A jaguar came 
to the river to drink; and after catching a big 
fish that came close to the shore, he returned 
to the forest. A monkey, with her little one 


io8 


CHARLIE CIRCUS, 


climbing about her neck, came for water, but 
a slight noise I made sent them scampering 



away. 

It was nearly dark when an animal sprang 
out of the bushes and almost landed in my boat. 
I jumped up to see a deer swimming for the 
other bank of the river. He looked to me as 
though he were being chased and took to the 
water to get rid of the dogs. I was right, for 
in a little while a pack of dogs came out of the 
bushes and ran up and down the river bank to 
find out what had become of the deer. With 

a growl some of 
them sniffed at 
me, but they soon 
went back by the 


/ thought "Old Nick” had me. 





























































WOULD THE INDIANS EAT ME? 109 

way they had come. I was afraid to go to 
sleep, for with dogs chasing a deer I was sure 
that Indians were following. But I hoped that 
when the dogs came back from the chase the 
Indians would return to their homes. 

About daybreak I fell asleep; and when I 
opened my eyes I thought ''Old Nick” had me, 
for kneeling in the boat right over my body 
was a naked creature that was as scary-looking 
as the "old boy” will ever get to be. This mon¬ 
ster’s face was painted red, and from the cor¬ 
ners of his mouth to his temples was painted 
a broad black band. His neck and body were 
painted black, but his chest and legs were a 
bright red. As he caught me by the hands he 
made a sound like some wild animal, and at 
this, two creatures like himself, with long hair 
as coarse as a horse’s tail hanging down their 
backs, sprang to the side of the boat, pulled it 
close to the shore, and quickly lifted me out. 
My hands were tied behind me; and while one 
man stood guard, the other Indians took every¬ 
thing out of the boat. Then they pushed the 
boat out into the water, and it floated down 
the river. They built a fire, cooked our meat, 
made bread of the mandioca meal, and, like 
wild, hungry beasts, ate everything that could 


no 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


be eaten but me. I felt that my time would 
soon come. The only reason they did not eat 
me was because they had found enough in the 
boat to satisfy their hunger. 

They were big, strong men, but were as 
quick as a cat in all their movements. They 
made me march with them, Indian file, with 
one man in front and two behind me. After a 
long, hard march we arrived in sight of Indian 
huts, and the dogs that came out to meet us 
warned all the people by their loud barking 
that the hunters had arrived. 

Upon entering the village, the men untied 
my hands and let me go with only one guard. 
All the men, women, and children crowded 
about me to see what I looked like, for many 
of them had never seen a white man, and but 
few white men had ever seen such a sight as 
was before me. 

The wild men and children wear no clothes 
in this hot country, and the only thing the 
women had on was a kind of sash or apron 
made of bark. In place of wearing clothes, it 
was the custom among them to paint their 
bodies in keeping with the style of the village 
and try to outshine each other. No two per¬ 
sons were painted in the same pattern—one 


IN THE INDIAN VILLAGE, 


III 


having black rings painted around his brown 
body from his shoulders to his knees. Another 
had his face painted black with red lines run¬ 
ning across it, while his body was dotted over 
with red, white, and black spots. One young 
warrior had his chest painted white and his 
body and legs painted black, which made him 
look as if he had on a white shirt and a black 
suit. Both men and women wore their front 
hair cut off straight across their foreheads, so 
that in some cases the ^^bangs’’ almost covered 
their eyes. The nicer-looking men and women 
had their back hair braided and hanging down 
their backs, with a bunch of beautifully colored 
feathers fastened on the end of the braid. All 
the men and women had holes in their ears, 
and they wore for ear ornaments reeds six or 
eight inches long and as large around as the 
little finger. On the front end of the reed was 
a pretty shell with red feathers set around it. 
Every man and boy had a hole in his lower lip 
as large around as his thumb, and in this he 
wore a button made of shell or some other orna¬ 
ment that was often so heavy that it pulled the 
lip down. 

I noticed that all the young people were 
freshly painted, and that all wore ornaments 


II2 


CHARLIE CIRCUS, 


that Indians think make them look beautiful. 
The thought occurred to me that these people 
had put on their party finery and were making 
ready for a feast. 

At sunset the Indian band gathered in front 
of the chief’s home. A large fire was built, 
the band began to play, and the people of the 
village made a circle around the fire and began 
dancing and singing. At first the singing was 
more like a moan or a groan; but as the dance 
went on the dancers became more and more 
noisy, and the crowd about me left to join in 
the fun. 

The band was making more fuss than ever. 
The dancers were shouting and yelling like 
madmen when an Indian, unlike the others, 
rushed into the crowd. This man jeered and 
made fun of the dancers. He scolded them, 
danced with them, tripped the dancers, and 
caused so much confusion and excitement that 
my guard forgot me and went toward the 
dancers to better see what was going to happen. 
I felt some one grab me by the arm and pull 
me away. IMy first thought was that they had 
come to get me for the feast, and I was about 
to shoot the man who had me when I saw that 
it was Fleetfoot. The next moment my guard 


CRACKED HIM OVER THE HEAD. 113 

was upon us, but Fleetfoot cracked him over 
the head with a club and he fell as if dead. 

Every one in the village was now so taken 
up with the dance that we were not missed; 
and with Fleetfoot to guide me, we never 
stopped going until morning. Through the 
wood we could see the sparkling of water; and, 
finding a stream, we plunged in for a bath. By 
keeping close to the bank we could walk in the 
water, but sometimes we swam a little so as 
to leave no tracks. Coming to a bluff, we 
crawled into a hole in the rocks and, being al¬ 
most dead for the want of food and rest, we 
were both asleep in a few minutes. When I 
awoke, Fleetfoot was standing by me with some 
kind of fruit from a palm tree that he gave me 
to eat. 

At our next meeting I will tell you of what 
happened to us. 

8 



Eleventh Evening. 

I CANNOT find words to tell you how 
good that fruit tasted to a hungry and 
thirsty boy. But I was anxious to know 
how Fleetfoot happened to be in the village 
without the other Indians, for up to this time 
we had spoken but few words. He told me 
that when Quickstep delivered his message the 
chief of the wild men got very angry and told 
our Indians to go back to their chief and bring 
him word that they would help him fight the 
white man; and to make sure that they would 
bring back the answer he wanted, the chief said 
he would hold Fleetfoot until they returned 
with the message. I had no sooner arrived in 
the village than Fleetfoot heard that a white 
man had been captured; and while he did not 
want the Indians to find out that he was my 
friend, he began to plan for an escape. 

The day before I arrived these savages had 
brought in an Indian who belonged to a tribe 

(114) 












WANTED TO DIE GAME, 115 

they were fighting, and for two days they had 
been getting ready to feast on the captive. 
Fleetfoot tried to get the Indian to escape with 
us, but the man belonged to a tribe that thought 
only cowards ran away from those who cap¬ 
tured them. Although this Indian knew that 
he was to be killed and eaten at the feast, he 
had rushed into the crowd of dancers, danced 
with them, and teased his enemies that he might 
be called a brave man. He would rather have 
it said that he ‘^died game’’ than to make his 
escape, save his life, and be called a coward by 
his people. I never before heard of a man 
acting like this, and as we walked down the 
stream I told my friend that I would rather be 
a real live donkey and let people ride me than 
to be a dead lion praised for what I had been. 
I told Fleetfoot how I had been captured by 
the Indians, that they had cut one of our boats 
loose, and that it was floating down the river 
the last I had seen of it. 

Up to this time we had been in the shade as 
we made our way down the stream, hoping as 
we went that it emptied into the big river we 
came up. But now we came to a barren part 
of the country where the grass was like parched 
straw, it had been so long since it had rained. 


ii6 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


For want of food I felt too weak to go farther, 
but Fleetfoot urged me not to give up. If we 
could get to the big river, we might head off 
our friends and go home with them; but if we 
did not hurry, they would go on down the riv¬ 
er, and the bad Indians would again capture 
us. With this thought before me I tried hard 
to go on walking in the water, as it cooled my 
feet and we left no tracks. But at last I had to 
stop and rest. Fleetfoot then went in search 
of food, but returned with only a snake. 

I had heard of people eating snakes, but I 
never thought I could eat snake meat. How¬ 
ever, I was now so nearly starved that I had 
changed my mind, and the snake meat did not 
seem so bad as I had thought it would. 

I built a fire, though it was a dangerous 
thing to do, for the Indians might see the 
smoke. While Fleetfoot was cooking the snake 
I heard a slight noise and then a splash in the 
stream. My first thought was of the Indians; 
and I pulled out my pistol, for I did not intend 
that we should be captured without a hard 
fight. In the direction from which the sound 
came the tall parched grass was moving as 
though some one was crawling through it. 
Then—I could not believe my eyes, for I saw 


THEY TRAVELED TOWARD WATER. 117 


one fish after another come out of the dry grass 
and jump into the water. The moment my 
companion saw the fish he picked up his club 
and began killing them before they could reach 
the water, there being a long line of them com¬ 
ing across the open country. They were South 
American catfish; and they were not only hav¬ 
ing a hard struggle to make their way over the 
dry land through weeds and grass, but birds 
that live on fish were 
picking them up as 
they floundered 
along. 

As we cooked and 
ate the fish I thought 



FISH TRAVELING OVER THE LAND. 


that we had been as much favored as the chil¬ 
dren of Israel had been when food called manna 
had been sent them from heaven to keep them 
from starving while wandering about in the 
desert. But Fleetfoot told me it often happened 
that when fish of this kind found the lake or 
stream they were in was about to go dry they 
all came out and made their way to water in 
some other part of the country. It made no 
difference how far it was from them, they al¬ 
ways traveled toward the water, and had never 













Ii8 


CHARLIE CIRCUS, 


been known to go in the wrong direction when 
hunting for a new home. 

As we might not again have such a chance 
to get food, we smoked some of the fish to take 
with us. We hurried on down the stream, since 
I now felt much better. Before night we came 
to a place where the stream was as wide as a 
big river, but shallow and clear. We waded 
on and on down this pebble-bottomed stream 
until we found a hiding place to spend the night. 

The next morning I awoke before Fleetfoot 
and decided to take a bath before he got up. 
As I stepped into the shallow water that spar¬ 
kled in the bright sunlight I caught sight of 
something among the pebbles on the bottom of 
the stream that looked like pieces of glass. 
^‘DiamondsI thought; and, getting a handful 
of the sand and gravel, I picked out all the 
bright-looking stones. But when they got dry 
they did not look as bright as they did when 
under the water; yet I felt sure that they must 
be diamonds, as there was no glass in that part 
of the country. I forgot about the bad Indians 
and, in fact, everything else except the bright 
little stones I had found. Some of them were 
as large as a small bird’s egg, others were the 
size of a cherry seed. I had found a double 


A POCKETFUL OF DIAMONDS. 119 

handful and put them in my hat when a splash 
in the water made me look around, and there 
lay Fleetfoot in the stream with the water run¬ 
ning over his red body. He was rolling over 
and over toward me in the shallow water like 
a child rolls over on the floor. I made him get 
up and look at what I had found, and he at once 
began to hunt for the bright little stones, say¬ 
ing the white traders would give anything for 

them. I must have found a place where the 
water had washed many of them together into 
a kind of pocket, for it was only after a long 
search that either of us found another one. 
Fleetfoot made a matting out of some long 
grass, and we placed this on the bottom of the 
stream and raked the sand and gravel over it; 

then, lifting the matting out of the water, we 
took it to the shore and looked all through the 
sand for diamonds, sometimes finding one, but 
more often we did not. 

If all the stones I had were diamonds, I had 
enough to make me rich; but I was greedy for 
more, and we worked nearly all day. But at 
last Fleetfoot said he had all he wanted and 
that we had better go to the river; that the dia¬ 
monds would not do us any good if the savage 
Indians overtook us. 


120 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


It must have been about eleven o’clock that 
night when we came to the mouth of the stream, 
and, as my companion had hoped, it emptied 
into the river that we had gone up. We now 
had little doubt that our friends had gone by 
on their way home, but we decided to spend the 
night here and in the morning begin our long 
journey on foot back to the lake. Fleetfoot was 
to stand guard while I slept, as it would never 
do for both to go to sleep at the same time, for 
we felt that our enemies were watching the 
river, knowing we would try to go home the 
same way we had come. 

I was on guard at daylight when I dis¬ 
covered that the Indians were surrounding us. 
I shook Fleetfoot, and he sprang to his feet as 
the red men closed in on us from all sides. The 
bushes and trees prevented them from shooting 
us with their arrows, but it was a matter of a 
few minutes when they would use their spears. 
Knowing that these Indians were afraid of 
guns and pistols, I took aim at one crawling 
toward us and fired. With a howl he ran back 
into the woods, and we started on a run down 
the river. Coming to a place where there were 
no trees, we saw that they were following us. 
I thought I should be killed by their arrows, so 


I FIRED AT THEM. 


I2I 


I turned and took one shot after another at our 
enemy, driving them back to the woods. To 
throw them off our track we swam the river, 
and had made our way to a point where the 
river made a sharp bend, when we saw twelve 
or fifteen Indians plunge into the water and 
swim for our side. As there could be no better 
place to fight them than while they were in the 
water, we hid and waited for them. 

Hoping to scare these savage men, I fired 
when they were in the middle of the river, the 
bullet splashing in the water near one of them. 
But they did not turn back. On they came, and 
I fired again. This time one of the men sank 
under the water, and when he came up he swam 
with only one hand. I tried to reload my pistol, 
but it was so badly rusted that before I could 
get it loaded the Indians were almost on our 
side of the river. Five times I snapped it, but 
it would not fire. The sixth time it went off 
with a bang, but the bullet splashed again in 
the water, and on they came. 

Things were looking very bad for us. Some 
of the enemy’s best swimmers were on the 
bank, and my pistol would not work. We start¬ 
ed to run when we heard the report of a rifle 
and one of the Indians went down; another 


122 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


crash, and a ball cut the water. But by this 
time the Indians were on the bank, and rifle 



balls were falling thick and fast about them. 
Those who could ran for the underbrush and 
took up the river. We were safe now, we felt, 
for two boats loaded with men had turned the 


S; 


THE BOATS CAME JUST IN TIME. 

bend and were coming up the river. They had 
seen the wild men in the water, had heard the 
report of my pistol, and had seen the bullets 
splash in the water near the Indians. Believ¬ 
ing a white man must be in danger, they had 
opened fire on the savages. 

The men in the boats were Spaniards, ne¬ 
groes, and good Indians. The Spaniard in 
charge of the men told us that they were dia¬ 
mond hunters, and that they were going up a 
















OUR FRIENDS GAVE US FOOD. 


123 


stream that emptied into the river not far from 
where we then were to hunt diamonds. They 
told us that they had seen a boat that had 
drifted against the shore in the bend of the 
river, which made them believe that white men 
or good Indians had been killed by the savages. 

I told the Spaniard all I knew about the 
country we had been over and about the vil¬ 
lage of savage Indians, but I did not say a 
word about the diamonds I had found. 

Our new friends gave us as much food as 
they could spare and showed us the boat they 
had seen. As we suspected, it was our boat, 
the one that the Indians had let float down the 
river when they captured me. Fleetfoot made 
two paddles, gathered some fruit, and, putting 
it in the boat with our other food, we told our 
friends good-by and started down the river. 

By taking turn about keeping our boat in the 
middle of the river, we traveled night and day, 
but we did not overtake Quickstep until we 
had almost reached the lake. He told Fleet- 
foot that when he returned to the boats and 
found one gone he thought I had been forced 
to leave to keep the savages from capturing 
me, and that from day to day he had expected 
to see me until he had lost hope. 


124 


CHARLIE CIRCUS, 


I was delighted that we had arrived at the 
lake. While I was anxious to see my uncle, I 
thought that the Indians should take a rest for 
a day; but they wanted to get home, so we pad- 
died on across the lake. 

At our next meeting I will tell you about the 
village where Fleetfoot lived. 


V 



Twelfth Evening. 



OW, children, it was just before sun¬ 
down when we arrived at the village, 
and all the people came down to the 
lake to welcome us. 

O! but I was glad to see my Uncle Will 
again. His arm was in a sling; but he told me 
that it had given him no trouble, and that, as 
the Indians were as good to him as people could 
be, he intended to remain in the village until he 
got well. He said that word had reached there 
that a white boy who had been on the wrecked 
boat had gone with the messenger Indians to 
the village of the savage red men, and from 
what he could understand from one of the In¬ 
dians who could speak a little English he hoped 
that I was the boy. 

I told my uncle of all the adventures I had 
had on the journey and how I just did escape 
from being eaten by the savages. After we 
had gone to our hut I told him about finding 

(125) 

















126 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


the diamonds, and his eyes opened wider and 
wider as I took handful after handful of the 
little stones out of my pockets and put them in 
my old hat. I thought that he would be satis¬ 
fied when he saw all these riches, but he said 



I SHOW MY DIAMONDS. 


that after I had a long rest and his arm got 
well we would get the Indians to go with us to 
search for some more of the precious little 
stones. I told him that, as I had found enough 
diamonds to make us both rich, we should not 











































/ WOULD NOT RISK BEING EATEN. 127 

be greedy and had better let well enough 
alone. The only reply my uncle made was that 
we had better go to supper, but I could see that 
he had made up his mind to go back to the 
place where I had found the diamonds. At the 
same time I made up my mind that I did not 
care to risk being eaten by the savages, espe¬ 
cially when I had all the diamonds I wanted. 

We had a supper of turtle, fish, turtle eggs, 
and mandioca bread, with black coffee. I 
found that all the Indians in this village were 
very kind-hearted. Every man, woman, and 
child wanted to shake hands with me, and for 
days I spent the time in going about among 
them learning all I could. I noticed that these 
people did not have the dark copper color of 
the North American Indians. The skin of the 
Brazilian Indian is a clear olive brown, re¬ 
minding one more of the Chinaman than of the 
Indian. 

Every day I visited a very old man who 
each day sat at the doorway of his hut, and all 
the children who followed me would put out 
their hands for the old man’s blessings. The 
children in this village loved their parents; and 
whenever a son or daughter of this old man 
came by his door, although some were quite 


128 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


old men and women, they stopped and kissed 
his hand. Such love and kindness among these 
people surprised me; but in talking to the old 
man I learned that at one time all the Indians 
were savages, and that only the Indians who 
had lived among white people and had schools 
and churches became kind and loving. 

The Indian children were allowed to go 
about as they pleased, and they all seemed to 
be such good children that their parents seldom 
had to whip them; but when they did, the child 
did not cry. And another strange thing about 
these children is that they never laugh. They 
only grin when something funny happens. I 
never saw a girl with a doll; but the boys had 
bows and arrows, which they used to kill fish 
and small game, for they were allowed to go 
hunting or fishing whenever they liked. 

The parent Indians do not seem to love their 
children like white people. It may be that we 
think this because they never pet their little 
ones. The babies will lie all day in their ham¬ 
mock cradles, watching everything that goes 
on, but seldom grin or cry. They do not cry 
for things they see; and if you give them a toy, 
they look at it, then just let it fall. White ba¬ 
bies will take a toy, look at it, stick it in their 


A HORRIBLE YELL STARTLED US. 129 

mouths, then drop it on the floor and cry to 
get it back. 

The old Indian told us about the flat-footed 
dwarf who, as he believed, lived on the hot, 
sandy plains of Brazil. He has only one foot, 
but it is so big that he can use it as an umbrella, 
lying down on his back and holding his big foot 
over himself as a shelter from the rain or sun. 
It is so wide and long that he can hop over the 
soft, marshy places and not sink down into the 
mud and water. 

From where we were seated I could see chil¬ 
dren feeding and playing with otters near the 
bank of the lake. One of the large boys had 
waded far out into the lake, and, as I was 
afraid he would be drowned, I kept watching 
him. Directly the boy threw up his hands with 
a horrible yell that startled the old Indian and 
caused all the children to run to the shore. A 
man jumped into a boat and went after the 
boy, who was trying to get back to land. As 
we went toward the lake to see what the trou¬ 
ble was, the old Indian said: ‘T suppose a sting 
ray fish has hurt that boy with his sharp sting¬ 
er. If it has, he may be a cripple for life.’’ 

The man got the boy into the boat, and when 
they reached the land we could see that the boy 

9 


130 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


was bent almost double from the great pain. 
He had a frightful, jagged cut on his leg, from 
which the blood was streaming. The Indian 
took the child home, but soon returned with 
his older brothers. Each one had a long spear, 
and they at once got into the boat. The old 
Indian called to them to take me with them, at 
the same time telling me to go with the boys 
and see them kill the sting ray. 

I got into the boat, and slowly and gently 
they moved over the water to the spot where 
the boy had thrown up his hands. The water 
at that point was a little muddy, but as we cir¬ 
cled out farther and 
farther we could 
see the bottom. It 
was not, however, 
until we had circled 
some distance from 
the muddy water 

THE DREADFUL STING RAY. that I SaW tWO 

golden-colored eyes 
looking up at us. The sting ray was lying 
stretched out flat on the mud in the bottom of 
the lake. The water was not deep; and when 
I called to the Indians to look at those strange 
eyes, down went their spears. The fish tried 





THE STING RAY CAN KILL A MAN, 131 


to dash away, beating the water with his long, 
whiplike tail. But it was of no use, for he 
could not tear the barbed spears from his body. 
There was a little blood and plenty of mud in 
the water now. We could no longer see the 
fish, but he was so quiet that we knew he must 
be dead. The Indians held to the spear han¬ 
dles, and I began pulling the boat to the shore, 
* where we finally landed the dead fish. 

As the fish lay spread out on the bank he 
reminded me of a big palm leaf with a long 
round tail for a stem. His back was a grayish 
yellow shading to a blue tint, and the under 
part of his body was a yellowish white. He 
had a long, smooth, whiplike tail that he could 
use like a horsewhip. About halfway down his 
tail there was a long daggerlike bone with a 
sharp point and cutting teeth on both edges, 
which he uses like a saw after wrapping his 
whiplike tail around an animal and pulling it 
to this stinger. The wound that it makes is 
so dreadful that it will sometimes kill a man. 
This fish is not good to eat, so the Indians cut 
this one up for bait. 

I went back home with my old friend, and 
found that some of his children had left him a 
nice string of fish and a bucket of mandioca 


132 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


meal. The old man kindled a fire on the stone 
hearth in his little kitchen and began getting 
dinner. He wanted me to eat with him; and 
I was glad to stay, for I had learned to like 
mandioca meal and wanted to find out how it 
was made, so I asked him about it. 

^Tt is made,'’ he said, ‘Trom the root of a 
bush that the white people call cassava. By 
and by I will go with you to where the women 
are preparing mandioca, or cassava, meal. I 
also want to kill a certain kind of snake and 
get its poison to relieve the pain of the poor boy 
that was wounded by that sting ray this morn- 
mg. 

The sun was hot that afternoon when we 
started to hunt snakes and to see the women 
make mandioca meal, but fortunately our path 
led through the woods. As the birds were si¬ 
lent, the only sound heard was the murmur of 
the streams on their way to the lake. The air 
was sweet with the perfume from the palm 
blossoms, and the gentle breeze that moved 
their leaves made the sunlight change their 
dark green to a silver shade and then green 
again. 

We had to walk slowly, for the old Indian 
was not very active, and from time to time we 


MAKING MANDIOCA MEAL, 


133 


stopped to turn a log or some brush to look for 
the kind of snake he wanted to kill. Sometimes 
we would pass a place where the trees had been 
cut down, and the finest pineapples I ever saw 
were growing in the open spaces. At other 
places I saw the most magnificent castor plants. 
They were as large as some of our trees, and 
are raised for their beans, out of which castor 
oil is made. 

We soon came to a field of mandioca bushes. 
They were five or six feet high, with palmlike 
leaves of a bluish green. The Indians have no 
plows to cultivate their fields, but they plant 
the roots of mandioca in holes that they dig in 
the ground. When full grown the roots are 
taken up and put into a pond of water, where 
they remain three or four days, then the outer 
skin is easily peeled off. After soaking in 
water, the smell is dreadful and the juice is a 
deadly poison; but women and girls take them 
out and carry them in baskets to a place where 
the tough, poisonous skin is stripped off and 
the roots are thrown into a trough. This 
trough is made from a hollow log, and women 
stand there, grating the mandioca through cop¬ 
per graters. When I first saw them grating 
these roots I thought they were scrubbing 


134 


CHARLIE CIRCUS. 


clothes on a washboard. The grated roots are 
rubbed through sieves and then packed in long, 
stockinglike bags made of palm strings. All 
the juice is then squeezed out in a vessel, and 
the starch that settles to the bottom is used for 
making tapioca. After this is done, the mandi- 
oca is taken from the bags and put over a fire 
in big earthen pans, which dries out the man- 
dioca and destroys the poison. It now tastes 
like sweet parched corn. The women then 
pack the meal into baskets and take it home, 
for as a food mandioca meal is to them what 
flour and potatoes are to us. 

It was quite late in the afternoon when we 
reached the village, and in front of some of the 
huts old women were making beautifully col¬ 
ored hammocks. It being Saturday, the young 
men and women were getting ready for Sun¬ 
day, and the girls had their dresses hung out 
to sun. Many of the dresses were made entire¬ 
ly of feathers of the most beautiful colors and 
shades. I thought they would be very hot in 
that climate on one who during the week wore 
so few clothes, but the old Indian said that the 
girls think they look fine in their feather dress¬ 
es because the birds that wore the plumage 
were so beautiful. 


WE WANT TO GO TO PARA. 


135 


Indians were coming into the village from 
every direction. Those from the woods had 
game and fruit, while those from the lake had 
fish. They stopped at the huts of the old peo¬ 
ple and, with a kind word, divided their game. 

Thus day after day passed, each day bring¬ 
ing something of wonderful interest to me un¬ 
til my uncle thought that his arm was well 
enough for him to go in search of diamonds. 
He tried to get some of the Indians to go with 
him; but Fleetfoot had told his people what 
bad men the savage Indians were, and my un¬ 
cle could not get any one to go with him. So 
he had to give up his plan to search for dia¬ 
monds and made arrangements for boats and 
men to take us back to Para. 








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